Perspectives on differences in perceived external stress: a study of women and men with coronary heart disease

Focuses on diversities among women and men are rare, and few studies have focused on gender differences in psychosocial factors and coronary heart disease. The present study is one of a series in which a wide range of psychosocial factors will be analysed with a focus on women. We compared women wit...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Stress and health 2002-08, Vol.18 (3), p.105-118
Main Authors: Hallman, Tina, Perski, Aleksander, Burell, Gunilla, Lisspers, Jan, Setterlind, Sven
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological and medical sciences
Cardiology. Vascular system
Coronary heart disease
Diversity
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Gender
Heart
Illness and personality
Illness, stress and coping
Medical sciences
Psychology
Psychology and medicine
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Psychosocial stress
Psykologi
SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP
SOCIAL SCIENCES
Socialvetenskap
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Summary:Focuses on diversities among women and men are rare, and few studies have focused on gender differences in psychosocial factors and coronary heart disease. The present study is one of a series in which a wide range of psychosocial factors will be analysed with a focus on women. We compared women with men as regards the impact of educational level and occupational position on differences in perceived external stress. A questionnaire (The Stress Profile) was answered by 538 rehabilitation participants (97 women, 441 men), and a reference group (5308 women, 5177 men), aged 40–65 years. Generally, women reported a higher value of perceived external stress than men. Most interesting, however, are the patterns of differences that emerged when women and men were compared in different subgroups. Women with upper secondary school education and women in white‐collar positions reported significantly higher levels of perceived external stress than men in the respective groups. When using common multivariate methods and adjusting for gender a great deal of information can be lost, and adjusting for gender makes it more difficult to find the true effect of exposures. It is only by regarding women and men separately that it is possible to link their very different working conditions and experience of stress to different health effects and vice versa. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
ISSN:1532-3005
1532-2998
DOI:10.1002/smi.931