An examination of the relationships among interpersonal stress, morale and academic performance in male and female medical students

David A. Spiegel, Robert C. Smolen and Cindy K. Jonas

Social Science & Medicine, 1986, vol. 23, issue 11, 1157-1161

Abstract: Conflicts between medical students and persons involved in their clinical training are a common, yet little studied, source of stress for students. The study reported in this paper examined the relationships between interpersonal stress, specific to training, and measures of students' morale and academic performance during the clinical phase of medical education. The results show that although interpersonal stress was inversely related to morale in both male and female students, the relationship was stronger for females. Morale and interpersonal stress variables strongly predicted the academic performance of female students, as measured by the grades they received in clinical clerkships and their scores on the Part II examination of the National Board of Medical Examiners. The results for males were less clear-cut, as the predictor variables were significantly related to only one of the two performance measures. These findings are consistent with the view that non-cognitive factors have particular relevance for the performance of female medical students.

Keywords: medical; students; interpersonal; relations; stress; student; morale; academic; performance; sex; differences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1986
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(86)90334-5
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:23:y:1986:i:11:p:1157-1161

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().