Multidimensional correlates of psychological stress: Insights from traditional statistical approaches and machine learning using a nationally representative Canadian sample
Benjamin A Hives,
Mark R Beauchamp,
Yan Liu,
Jordan Weiss and
Eli Puterman
PLOS ONE, 2025, vol. 20, issue 5, 1-13
Abstract:
Approximately one-fifth of Canadians report high levels of psychological stress. This is alarming, as chronic stress is associated with non-communicable diseases and premature mortality. In order to create effective interventions and public policy for stress reduction, factors associated with stress must be identified and understood. We analyzed data from the 2012 ‘Canadian Community Health Survey - Mental Health’ (CCHS-MH), including 66 potential correlates, drawn from a range of domains (e.g., psychological, physical, social, demographic factors). First, we used a random forest algorithm to determine the most important predictors of psychological stress, then we used linear regressions to quantify the linear associations between the important predictors and psychological stress. In total, 23,089 Canadian adults responded to the 2012 CCHS-MH, which was weighted to be nationally representative. Random forest analyses found that, after accounting for variance from other factors and considering complex interactions, life satisfaction (relative importance = 1.00), negative social interactions (0.99), primary stress source (0.85), and age (0.77) were the most important correlates of psychological stress. To a lesser extent, employment status (0.36), was also an important variable. Univariable linear regression suggested that these variables had effects ranging from small to medium-to-large. Multiple linear regression showed that lower life satisfaction, being younger, greater negative social interaction, reporting a primary stressor, and being employed were all found to be associated with greater psychological stress (beta range = 0.03 to 0.84, all p
Date: 2025
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0323197 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 23197&type=printable (application/pdf)
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:plo:pone00:0323197
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0323197
Access Statistics for this article
More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().