Stress is a fact of life. There has been much research done since the early 1970's dealing with the various aspects and relationships of stress and life events for all stages of human development. The purpose of this study was to investigate perceived life-event stressors of 9th grade and 12th grade students in three Pacific Northwest rural schools. The study also sought to a) ascertain whether male students in the 9th grade and 12th grade perceive stressful life events differently than female

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... tudents in the same grade, and b) explore if there was a difference in perceptions of students of "different" rural community populations and different age populations (9th & 12th graders). The specific objectives of the study were as follows: 1. Identify changes since 1984, if any, in perceived life-event stressors in 9th and 12th grade students using the Y ARS. 2. Determine if differences in perceived life-event stressors exist between 9th grade students and 12th grade students. 3. Determine if differences in perceived life-event stressors exist between 9th grade male and female students and between 12th grade female and male students. 4. Identify any significant differences between 9th grade and 12th grade students in three different rural schools with different community and graduating class populations. 2 Participants in this study consisted of 9th and 12th graders currently enrolled during the 1991-1992 school year. The samples were taken from three different rural schools in Pacific Northwest with "different" enrollment sizes. The instrument was the Youth Adaptation Rating Scale (YARS), which was composed of a list of 58 life events that have been determined to create stress in adolescents that results from difficulty dealing with change, and that require some type of adaptation. 3 Each item on the YARS was ranked by respondents using a descriptive scale (0-5) according to the degree of adaptation required for each event. The YARS was color-coded to indicate grade and gender of the adolescent. Each set of YARS was alpha-coded to indicate which school (and population size) it came from. Resulting data showed that 21 of the original 58 YARS life events showed a significant decrease (u_ > .10) in degree of severity ratio when compared to the original study. Mean score results were: 1. The mean scores for males and females were significantly different at the .0001 level. 2. The mean scores for grade level were significantly different at the .0159 level. 3. The mean scores by school (population) were not significantly different for any of the three different schools (populations) measured. 4. The two-variable group, gender I school, had mean scores significantly different at the .002 level, showing a pronounced variance between gender groups of the different schools. 5. The mean scores for the two-variable group, grades/ school, were not 4 significantly different.