Abstract
Purpose
To examine the association between life stress, uncertainty stress and self-reported illness among Chinese college students.
Methods
Participants were 11,942 students who were identified through a multistage survey sampling process that included 50 universities. Stress and illness status were obtained by self-report. Both unadjusted and adjusted methods were considered in the analyses.
Results
Self-reported short- and long-term illness prevalences were 27.4% (95% CI: 23.9%–30.8%) and 20.0% (95% CI: 17.0%–23.1%), respectively. The logistic regression model found that while uncertainty stress was associated with both categories of illness, life stress was not related to either category of illness.
Conclusion
These findings underscore the importance of controlling uncertainty stress and can be used to inform future policies and reinforce the need for uncertainty stress management in China.
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Change history
30 January 2018
The journal had been advised to revise the title so that Clarivate Analytics can try to count the citations more accurately. There’s been confusion due to the existence of another journal with the same name.
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This study was partially funded by the WHO project titled “Global Health Professions Student Survey, China,” the National Nature Science Foundation of China (Major Project, 71,490,733; 71,473,221), the National Social Science Foundation of China (16BTY063) and Global Bridges/IGLC(2014SC1). All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were approved by the Ethics Committee of the Medical Center, Zhejiang University, and informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
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The original version of this article was revised: Due to the existence of another journal with the same name, the Publisher has added a subtitle, “From Theory to Practice.” Effective as of January 2018, the new title of this Journal is Journal of Public Health: From Theory to Practice.
A correction to this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-017-0893-1.
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Yang, T., Jiang, S., Yu, L. et al. Life stress, uncertainty stress and self-reported illness: a representative nationwide study of Chinese students. J Public Health 26, 205–209 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-017-0837-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-017-0837-9