Psychosocial Stressors in Young Families from Brno and Znojmo Part I

Overview

As part of the longitudinal project ELSPAC (European Longitudinal Study of Pregnancy and Childhood) there has been a comprehensive repeated research on the frequency and intensity of the influence of demanding life events (psychosocial stressors) on families from the cities of Brno and Znojmo. The data set for the research is made of families with 5-year-old children, with participation of 2997 women and 2523 men from Brno, 606 women and 527 men from Znojmo. The parents were given questionnnaires on demeanding life events (consisting of 43 items) classified in seven categories on the basis of thematic similarities (illnesses, job, partnership, finances, housing, social relations, maternity and death).

As well as in the first phase of the research (in the period of pregnancy of the questioned women), the presumptions claiming a difference between the sexes in the intensity of the influence of demanding life events have been proved now. Moreover, significant differences in the overall frequency and intensity of the influence of demanding life events that are connected with local lifestyles of inhabitants of Brno and Znojmo have been discovered. Slight differences in the ranking of intensity of the influence of demanding life events in the categories of partnership, social relations and illnesses have been noticed between the statistical sets of men and women. Regarding the frequency of individual demanding life events, the set of men from Brno shows different results from the set of women from Brno in 32 demanding life events out of 43, while in Znojmo only in 13 ones.

The given results show that women response to stress with a stronger emotional sensitivity than men, and the spectrum together with overall frequency of stress events are different for the two sexes, too.

Key words:
psychosocial stress, demanding life events, ELSPAC.