Examination stress in Singapore primary schoolchildren: how compliance by subjects can impact on study results.
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.
Parker
G
G
School of Psychiatry, University of NSW, and Mood Disorders Unit, Black Dog Institute, Sydney, Australia. g.parker@unsw.edu.au
Cai
Y
Y
Tan
S
S
Dear
K
K
Henderson
A S
AS
Poh
G T
GT
Kwee
G C
GC
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