A Focus Group Interview Study of the Experience of Stress amongst School-Aged Children in Sweden
1
Faculty of Health Sciences, Kristianstad University, 291 88 Kristianstad, Sweden
2
Clinical Health Promotion Centre, Medical Faculty, Lund University, 221 00 Lund, Sweden
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17(11), 4021; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17114021
Received: 8 May 2020 / Revised: 2 June 2020 / Accepted: 3 June 2020 / Published: 5 June 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Child and Adolescent Health in a Life-Course Perspective)
The study explored experiences of stress in children aged 10–12. An inductive qualitative design was used. Ten focus group interviews were conducted with Swedish schoolchildren (n = 42) aged 10–12. The interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The study identified one theme—“Body and mind react”—and three subthemes: (1) Friendships matters, (2) Parental stress affect, and (3) Trying to do my best. Stress often occurred in the children’s everyday environment. The children had experienced how stress could be expressed both physically and mentally, inside and outside school. The children also had the experience of seeing people in their environment being stressed, which could create feelings that affected the children. The experience of the children was also that stress can sometimes be good. Stress related to peers, family, school, and society was commonly experienced by children aged 10–12. Both positive and negative stress was reported.
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Keywords:
stress; school-aged children; experience; focus group; interviews; qualitative study
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MDPI and ACS Style
Warghoff, A.; Persson, S.; Garmy, P.; Einberg, E.-L. A Focus Group Interview Study of the Experience of Stress amongst School-Aged Children in Sweden. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 4021.
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