title: Examination stress in Singapore primary schoolchildren: how compliance by subjects can impact on study results.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Examinations are anecdotally viewed as extremely stressful to Singapore schoolchildren. We test this postulate by obtaining parental ratings of children's emotional stress levels longitudinally in a large representative sample of sixth (P6) and fifth (P5) class primary schoolchildren, respectively, exposed and unexposed to a streaming examination.
  
  
  METHODS
  Children's stress levels were rated monthly by a parent for 10 months.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Analyses failed to find evidence of any differential stress impact across P6 and P5 comparison groups, apart from a subset of P6 children whose parents complied with every monthly survey.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The streaming examination in the final year of primary school did not emerge as a general stressor to children, but achieved salience within a defined subset of children whose parents were highly study compliant. Study compliance may be a proxy variable of some import, and have wider relevance to other cohort studies and to intervention trials.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychiatry, University of NSW, and Mood Disorders Unit, Black Dog Institute, Sydney, Australia. g.parker@unsw.edu.au
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Parker
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Cai
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tan
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Dear
authors.forename: A S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Henderson
authors.forename: G T
authors.initials: GT
authors.lastname: Poh
authors.forename: G C
authors.initials: GC
authors.lastname: Kwee
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D004521:Educational Measurement; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D010290:Parents; D012846:Singapore; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000209:etiology* / Q000523:psychology*; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires