Trait anxiety in Brazilian university students from Aracaju

Abstracts

INTRODUÇÃO: No estudo da ansiedade, dois conceitos distintos são encontrados: ansiedade-estado, que se refere a um estado emocional transitório caracterizado por sentimentos subjetivos de tensão que podem variar em intensidade ao longo do tempo; e ansiedade-traço, a qual se refere a uma disposição pessoal, relativamente estável, a responder com ansiedade a situações estressantes e a uma tendência a perceber um maior número de situações como ameaçadoras. Na literatura, encontram-se várias escalas com o objetivo de avaliar esses dois aspectos, mas o Inventário de Ansiedade Traço-Estado, de Spielberger et al. (1970), é o mais utilizado. Os objetivos do presente estudo foram: 1) descrever os escores do Inventário de Ansiedade Traço-Estado em uma amostra de estudantes universitários de Aracaju (SE), onde as pressões da vida moderna estão menos presentes; e 2) compará-los com os resultados obtidos em São Paulo (SP). MÉTODO: Foram avaliados 498 estudantes universitários (53,6% do sexo feminino), sendo que 87,6% tinham menos que 30 anos, 89,6% eram solteiros, e 24,7% tinham uma ocupação profissional. RESULTADOS: Os dados do presente estudo mostraram que, em Aracaju, os maiores níveis de ansiedade estão entre mulheres, solteiros e aqueles com até 30 anos de idade. Na comparação entre Aracaju e São Paulo, foi encontrado menor nível de ansiedade-traço nos estudantes aracajuanos, sendo que essa diferença parece residir principalmente no grupo de indivíduos de até 30 anos de idade. CONCLUSÃO: Os resultados aqui apresentados sugerem que a ansiedade-traço dos estudantes universitários de Aracaju é menor que a dos estudantes universitários de São Paulo, apoiando a hipótese de que grandes cidades possam favorecer o desenvolvimento da ansiedade.

Ansiedade; personalidade; estudantes; cidades

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Trait anxiety in brazilian university students from Aracaju

Marcel Magalhães Alves Gama^I; Gustavo Souza Moura^I; Ronaldo Franca Araújo^I; Flavia Teixeira-Silva^II

^IMedical student, Universidade Federal de Sergipe (UFS), São Cristóvão, SE, Brazil

^IIPhD. Associate professor, UFS

Correspondence

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: Two different concepts are found in the study of anxiety: state anxiety, which is a transient state characterized by subjective feelings of tension that can vary in intensity with time; and trait anxiety, which is a relatively stable personality disposition to respond to a wider range of situations as dangerous or threatening. In the literature, it is possible to find various scales that aim at evaluating these two aspects of anxiety, although the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory by Spielberger et al. (1970) is the most widely used. The objectives of the present study were: 1) to describe the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory scores of a sample of university students from Aracaju, where modern life stressors are not as present as they are in the large Brazilian cities such as São Paulo, and 2) to compare the results obtained to those from a previous study performed in São Paulo.

METHOD: Four hundred and ninety-eight university students (53.6% female) from Aracaju were evaluated: 87.6% were under 30 years of age, 89.6% were single and 24.7% had a job.

RESULTS: The data obtained from this study showed that in Aracaju the highest levels of anxiety were among individuals who were either single, under 30 or female. The comparison between Aracaju and São Paulo found that the Aracajunian students had lower levels of anxiety, and this difference seemed to reside mainly in the group under 30 years of age.

CONCLUSION: The results presented here suggest that trait anxiety in university students from Aracaju is lower than in university students from São Paulo, supporting the hypothesis that life in large cities can favor the development of anxiety.

Keywords: Anxiety, personality, students, cities.

Introduction

Although anxiety is a universal phenomenon, experienced by all human beings several times throughout life, it has not received a precise definition yet. There is little agreement between what many researchers call anxiety,¹ and it is even considered as irreducible and indefinable.² Although it has no exact definition, anxiety can be easily perceived. In humans, it is perceived as an emotion characterized by a tense and physically exhaustive warning, focused on an imminent and inevitable danger or emergency, although not objectively apparent, with a painful uncertainty about the possibility of solving the situation.³ Two different concepts are found in the study of anxiety: state-anxiety, which is a transient emotional state characterized by subjective feelings of tension that can vary in intensity with time, and trait-anxiety, which is a relatively stable personality disposition to respond to a wider range of situations as dangerous or threatening.⁴

In the literature, it is possible to find various scales that aim to evaluate these two aspects of anxiety, although the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) by Spielberger et al. is the most widely used.⁵ This inventory is comprised of 40 statements about the individual's feelings, distributed into two parts. The first part assesses state anxiety, while the second assesses trait anxiety. Each part consists of 20 descriptive statements of personal feelings, which the individuals score in relation to the intensity with which they are occurring at that moment (part I) or in relation to the frequency with which they usually occur (part II), through a scale ranging from 1 to 4 points. The STAI was translated and validated in Brazil by Biaggio & Natalício in 1979⁶ and, since then, it has been revalidated in other studies.^7,8 These studies obtained mean scores of trait anxiety in the Brazilian population, which have served for investigations that select individuals according to their level of trait anxiety.^9-12 However, validation studies of the STAI used in their samples only volunteers living in São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro, Southern Brazil. Since Brazil is a country of continental dimensions, which has different regional cultures, it is possible that mean values of trait anxiety are different between various regions of the Brazilian State. In addition, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are large cities, where millions of people compete for a space in the job market increasingly more industrialized.¹⁴ Considering that many believe that the pressures of a modern, technological and competitive society are factors of great importance in the development of anxiety,¹⁵ it would not be surprising if the population of the investigated cities presented higher mean values of trait anxiety compared with populations of other Brazilian cities. Thus, it would be interesting to perform similar studies to those carried out in Southeast Brazil in other Brazilian regions, in order to know possible intercultural variabilities in our country regarding trait anxiety.

The objectives of the present study were: 1) to describe the STAI scores of a sample of university students from Aracaju, a city in the Brazilian Northeast, where modern life stressors are less present; and 2) to compare the obtained results to those from a previous study performed in São Paulo.⁸

Methods

Sample and procedure

A total of 498 university students (231 men, 267 women) from different courses at Universidade Federal de Sergipe were assessed. The students, at the classroom, were asked to voluntarily answer a STAI version that was translated into Portuguese and validated in Brazil by Biaggio & Natalício.⁶

Before applying the inventory, the individuals were explained that the survey aimed to evaluate personality characteristics and that those who decided to participate could identify themselves by using their initials. It was also stressed that the researchers would use collected data and material for research purposes only, comparing the information obtained with that of other volunteers, without disclosure of any participant's identity.

Ethics

The study was approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of Universidade Federal de Sergipe.

Instrument

Only part II of the STAI was used, which assessed the individual's tendency to respond anxiously to life situations (trait anxiety). This part consists of 20 statements describing personal feelings, with total score ranging from 20 to 80 points, and higher values indicate higher anxiety levels.

Statistical analysis

Comparisons according to demographic characteristics (age, gender, marital status and job) were performed by one-way ANOVA, followed by a posteriori Tukey's test when needed. The data were grouped into three categories regarding age: A (? 30 years), B (between 31 and 45 years) and C (> 45 years). Comparisons between the data obtained in this study and the data obtained in a previous study carried out in São Paulo were performed using Student's t test.

Results

The data obtained from Aracajunian students were grouped according to sociodemographic characteristics (Table 1). In the present study, the differences between genders were significant; women had higher anxiety scores than men (F_1.468 = 15.65; p = 0.00009). Marital status differences were also significant; single individuals had the highest scores (F_1.461 = 5.68; p = 0.018). There was no significant difference between students who had a job and those who were not working (F_1.466 = 0.26; p = 0.61).

In relation to age, when the three categories (A, B and C) were analyzed, ANOVA showed a significant difference between groups (F_2.478 = 4.12; p = 0.017), which was not confirmed by Tukey's test. This can be related to the fact that category C has a very small number of representatives, which reduces a posteriori test power. Therefore, when only categories A and B were analyzed, individuals aged 30 years or younger had higher scores when compared with those aged between 31-45 (F_2.468 = 7.68; p = 0.006).

When comparing the data from the present study to those obtained in São Paulo, in a study assessing 1,080 university students,⁸ significant differences were found, as shown in Table 2. Significantly lower anxiety levels were found in Aracajunian students belonging to the following groups: age group B, single, men and individuals with a job. Independently from age, marital status, gender and job, the university students from Aracaju had lower STAI scores when compared with the university students from São Paulo.

Discussion

This study aimed to describe the STAI-trait scores for a sample of university students from Aracaju and compare them with results obtained in São Paulo. In both studies, higher anxiety levels were found in individuals who were either female, single or under 30. This finding is in agreement with other studies using the STAI.^16,17

Epidemiological studies have shown higher anxiety scores in younger samples compared with older samples.¹⁸

Differences between genders (women had higher scores than men) are also in agreement with other studies.^19-23 According to researches performed by the American scientific community, women are more predisposed to developing panic disorder (7.7 vs. 2.9%), compulsive obsessive disorder (6.6 vs. 3.6%) or post-traumatic stress disorder (12.5 vs. 6.2%) throughout their life.²⁴ It is possible that such greater predisposition is associated with the fact that women naturally have a more anxious trait than men.

As to younger individuals, there is no scientific data to justify lower trait anxiety scores in university students under 30 years of age living in Aracaju when compared with those from São Paulo. However, it can be inferred that those living in São Paulo are exposed to an infinite number of stimuli that lead to stress, modulating trait anxiety. For a great part of the population of large urban centers, especially of poor countries, living in a metropolis is a synonym of unemployment, poverty, violence, traffic jams, slums, and pollution.^25,26 It is possible that, for young people, who are about to enter the job market, such statistics can be threatening.

Finally, the Aracajunians who share their time between work and study seem to be less concerned about it than university students/workers from São Paulo, perhaps also a reflex of higher competitiveness in large centers.

One way or another, trait anxiety scores in university students from Aracaju are significantly lower than those in university students from São Paulo, supporting the hypothesis that life in large cities can favor the development of anxiety. However, the cultural differences between both cities cannot be discarded, since they could contribute to different anxiety levels of students, independently of the presence of metropolitan tensions. One possible form of avoiding these cultural influences would be to evaluate trait anxiety levels in large and small cities of the same country region. While this is not performed, the present study clearly showed that inhabitants from different Brazilian regions have different STAI-trait scores. Such differences, although not clinically relevant, would certainly change the classification of individuals in terms of anxiety levels in scientific studies. Considering the usual standard classification in high anxiety (< mean - 1 standard deviation), medium anxiety (mean 1 standard deviation) and low anxiety (> mean + 1 standard deviation), a university student from Aracaju with 52 points in the STAI-trait would be classified as highly anxious, but his anxiety level would be considered only medium if he lived in São Paulo. Therefore, there is no doubt about the importance of each Brazilian region having its own anxiety scores described.

Conclusion

The data obtained from this study showed higher anxiety levels in individuals who were either female, single or under 30.

Compared with the results obtained in São Paulo, the university students from Aracaju presented lower trait-anxiety scores than the university students from São Paulo, suggesting that data found in a given Brazilian region may not be extrapolated to the rest of the country.

References

• 1. Pessotti I. Ansiedade. São Paulo: Pedagógica e Universitária; 1978.
• 2. Lader M. The nature of anxiety. Brit J Psychiat. 1972;121(564):481-91.
• 3. Martin P. Animal models sensitive to anti anxiety agents. Acta Psychiatr Scand Suppl. 1998;98(393):74-80.
• 4. Spielberger CD, Gorsuch RL, Lushene RE. Manual for the state-trait anxiety inventory ("self-evaluatin questionaire"). California: Consulting-Psychologists; 1970.
• 5. Andreatini R, Seabra ML. A estabilidade do IDATE-traço: avaliação após cinco anos. Rev ABP-APAL; 1993;15(1):21-5.
• 6. Biaggio AMB, Natalício L. Manual para o Inventário de Ansiedade Traço Estado (IDATE). Rio de Janeiro: CEPA; 1979.
• 7. Gorenstein C, Andrade L. Validation of a portuguese version of the beck depression inventory and the state-trait anxiety inventory in Brazilian subjects. Braz J Med Biol Res. 1996;29(4):453-7.
• 8. Andrade L, Gorenstein C, Vieira Filho AH, Tung TC, Artes R. Psychometric properties of the Portuguese version of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory applied to college students: factor analysis and relation to the Beck Depression Inventory. Braz J Med Biol Res. 2001;34(3):367-74.
• 9. Gorenstein C, Pompéia S, Andrade L. Scores of brazilian university students on the beck depression and the state-trait anxiety inventories. Psychological Reports. 1995;77(2):635-41.
• 10. Leite JR, Seabra MLV, Sartori VA, Andreatini R. The Video-Recorded Stroop Color Word Test as a new model of experimentally-induced anxiety. Prog Neuro psychopharmacol & Biol Psychiat. 1999;23:809-22.
• 11. Silva FT, Leite JR. Physiological modifications and increase in state anxiety in volunteers submitted to the Stroop Color-Word Interference Test: a preliminary study. Physiol Behav. 2000;70(1-2):113-8.
• 12. Teixeira-Silva F, Prado GB, Ribeiro LC, Leite JR. The anxiogenic vídeo-recorded Stroop Color-Word Test: psychological and physiological alterations and effects of diazepam. Physiol Behav. 2004;82(2-3):215-30.
• 13. Coelho MA. Regionalização e planejamento regional do Brasil. In: Geografia do Brasil. Coelho MA. São Paulo: Moderna; 1996.
• 14. Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística. Cidades@: o Brasil município por município. Disponível em: <http://www.ibge.gov.br/cidadesat/default.php>. Acesso em: 02 set. 2007.
• 15. Fisher S. The causes and control of anxiety. Br J Hosp Med. 1990;44(3):194-7.
• 16. Nakazato K, Shimonaka Y. The Japanese State-Trait Anxiety Inventory: age and sex differences. Percept Mot Skills. 1989;69(2):611-7.
• 17. Stanley MA, Beck JG, Zebb BJ. Psychometric properties of four anxiety measures in older adults. Behav Res Ther. 1996;34(10):827-38.
• 18. Regier DA, Boyd JH, Burke JD Jr., Rae DS, Myers JK, Kramer M, et al. One-month prevalence of mental disorders in the United States. Based on five Epidemiologic Catchment Area Sites. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1988;45(11):977-86.
• 19. Guida FW, Ludlow LH. A cross-cultural study of test anxiety. J Cross-Cultural Psychology. 1989;20:178-90.
• 20. Inderbitzen HM, Hope DA. Relationship among adolescent reports of social anxiety, anxiety, and depressive simptoms. J Anx Disord. 1995;9:385-96.
• 21. Pajares F, Kranzler J. Self-efficacy beliefs and general mental ability in mathematical problem-solving. Contemporary Educational Psychology. 1995;20:426-43.
• 22. Silverman WK, La Greca AM, Wasserstein S. What do children worry about? Worries and their relation to anxiety. Child Dev. 1995;66(3):671-86.
• 23. Steer RA, Beck AT, Beck JS. Sex effect sizes of the Beck Anxiety Inventory for psychiatric outpatients matched by age and principal disorders. Assessment. 1995;2:31-8.
• 24. Kessler RC, McGonagle KA, Zhao S, Nelson CB, Hughes M, Eshleman S. Lifetime and 12-month prevalence of DSM-III-R psychiatric disorders in the United States. Results from the National Comorbidity Survey. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1994;51(1):8-19.
• 25. Bueno, LMM. Projeto e favela: metodologia para projetos de urbanização. [tese]. São Paulo: Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade de São Paulo; 2000.
• 26. Clichevski N. Informalidad y segregación urbana en América Latina: una aproximación. Santiago do Chile: CEPAL/ECLAC; 2000.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  01 Dec 2008
• Date of issue
  Apr 2008

History

• Accepted
  21 Nov 2007
• Received
  10 Sept 2007