Abstract

The purpose of this study was to find out adolescents' stressors. The subjects of the study were 355 middle school and 398 high school students. Adolescent-Family Inventory of Life Events and Change(McCubbin, Patterson, & Wilson, 1981) was modified to measure adolescents' stressful life events for the last few months. This scale includes six life events in the areas of family(19 items), parent-adolescent relationships(15 items), relationship with friend(12 items), school and teachers(9 items), physical aspect(6 items), and academic aspect (8 items). The reliability of each area was .73, .79, .70, .60, .59 and .60, respectively. Data analyses were done by using descriptive statistics, ANOVA, paired t-test, common factor analysis. For construct validity and dimensionality of all Scales, factor analysis of both principal factoring with prior communality and varimax rotation were performed. A two-way ANOVA was conducted to compare groups to find out any sex and age differences in the mean of each subscales of stressors. Similarities and differences were found in the types of stressors in terms of adolescents' age and sex. Specifically, the most dominant stressors in adolescents were strains from parent-adolescent relationships and from academic area. Second, girls had more strains from both parent-adolescent relationships and academic area than boys. Third, effects of stressors varied according to adolescents' age.