Stress
People experience stress in response to challenges in everyday life, including jobs, relationships with others, home, and other situations. Sometimes stress is helpful – it can encourage us to meet a deadline or get things done. But long-term stress can increase the risk of diseases like depression, heart disease and a variety of other problems by “turning on” biological stress responses too often and for too long.
• Stress was measured by asking King County adults 4 questions about how often they have experienced certain symptoms of stress in the past 30 days. Answers to these questions were combined to create a perceived stress scale with a possible score between 5 (Low) and 20 (High).
• In 2007, the average stress score for adults in King County was 8.0. (figure 1) East Region residents reported a significant decrease in stress between 2001 and 2007.
• In 2007, residents of Seattle and South Region reported more stress than residents of East Region.
• The 4 questions used to make up the stress scale are shown on the following page. Between 2001 and 2007, the percent of people who felt that they were unable to control important things in their life decreased significantly in King County and in each region except South.
• Older adults, ages 65 and up, perceived reported less stress than people in other age groups.(figure 2)
• People of color reported feeling more stress than white people.
• People with household incomes $50,000 or higher reported less stress in their lives than those with incomes below $35,000. (figure 3) Those in the $35,000 to $49,999 range reported less stress than those with incomes of $15,000 to $24,999.
• College graduates reported a lower level of stress than people with a high school education or less. • No significant differences were found by gender or relationship status.
Data Source, Definitions, and Limitations
The stress measures are from the King County Community Health Survey, 2001, 2004 and 2007, which used the shortened version of the Perceived Stress Scale, “A Global Measure of Perceived Stress,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 1983 vol.24:385-396 (S Cohen, T Kamarok, R Mermelstein).
In 2007, this telephone survey of adults living in King County was conducted in Spanish as well as English for the first time. The limitations of an English-and-Spanish-only telephone survey include the following: a) people who do not have a land line telephone or who do not speak English or Spanish are excluded, and b) people who have less education and lower incomes are underrepresented.
