November 4, 2024. Uncertainty prevails. Uncertainty as to the outcome of the next day’s presidential election and how events will unfold from there. Stress hovers in the background over every word and interaction.
Yet, in a study conducted in PBS Assistant Professor Natasha Chaku’s InterACT Lab, that stress comes to the fore along with a doubly understudied group: adolescents in rural communities, in this case those across the states of Indiana and Maine. Chaku’s study in collaboration with her colleague Elena Maker Castro, a psychology professor at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, is looking at how adolescents may be impacted by the election, particularly with respect to stress.
“These are all youth, 16 or 17 years old, who can’t yet vote,” said Chaku. “But we know from previous literature that whether you vote or whether you can vote, people are stressed out by large national events like the election. They are hearing about it from friends, parents and teachers and understand the issues at stake.”
At the same time, community engagement and activism can also positively contribute to adolescent development. “We know being civically involved is generally good for people’s health,” Chaku explained. “Long-term studies show that folks who say they are engaged civically and vote have better health. Those folks have better health outcomes and report better health behaviors. We think in adolescents this might be important to development, for gaining awareness of who they are and connecting themselves to their community.”
Ultimately, Chaku hopes the study will enable researchers to gain a better sense of the balancing act required to promote adolescent health and well-being, and predicts that individuals may be able mitigate the stress of political engagement if they have a strong sense of belonging to groups or organizations in the community.
How the study works
The study proceeds in two phases. Phase one is complete and consisted of interviews with 30 adolescents in rural parts of Indiana and Maine. In phase two, those same adolescents provided two forms of evidence, saliva samples and weeklong daily diaries, both of which offer clues to their stress levels, sense of belonging, and general well-being.
“With saliva samples,” Chaku explained, “we can construct a diurnal rhythm of cortisol. A lot of people know cortisol as a stress hormone but it’s really just a hormone that helps us adapt to the experiences in our daily life. One of the most common ways to think about cortisol is that it’s relatively high when you wake up, which helps us get up in the morning. There’s a spike in the first 30 minutes. Then it declines across the day in opposition to melatonin, which helps you go to sleep. It has a natural rhythm that helps us regulate our sleep and wake cycles, but that rhythm could become disrupted by stressful experiences.”
Alongside taking three saliva samples a day, participants will record where they spent time during the week and the sense of belonging they felt in each location. A map constructed for each participant during the interview phase depicts all the places they go. “So we can show them the maps to them ask them during the week where they went and where did they feel more or less belonging,” explained Chaku. “Did they have positive or negative interactions in those places?”
Initial takeaways
The results of phase two, as of today, have yet to be determined. However, the researchers have begun to discuss their preliminary thoughts on the interviews conducted in phase one. What they find is surprising in that it defies common beliefs about rural communities. Many people assume rural communities are more homogeneous with respect to both identity and politics than they really are. Yet in terms of identity, said Chaku, “We have a fairly diverse sample. Fully a fifth belong to a racial, ethnic, gender or other minority. I think we have lay misconceptions about the makeup of rural areas. There are more racial and ethnic minorities and more gender diversity in rural areas. But rural adolescents are really understudied.”
In terms of politics too, allegiances go in several directions. Whether in Indiana or Maine, said Chaku, “It was really varied. Some participants said they were in a progressive bubble, and they didn’t agree with its views. Then some said they’re in a conservative bubble and didn’t agree with that. I will say, the number of young adolescents who said they’re in a progressive space was really surprising to us. There are trends that say young people are far more liberal and progressive than their communities and get more conservative over time. We expected that our rural adolescents would feel most out of place in conservative communities. But we found it went in all directions.
“It is surprising,” she continued, “but it highlights how diverse rural spaces are. We often consider them to all be alike. But even in Indiana you see some big differences in how people feel about their rural communities and how liberal or progressive they think those spaces are.”
Another strong commonality among the participants is the key role of churches in their lives. “Lots of folks talk about church as a positive community, and then lots of folks talked about ways they feel alienated from church. One participant said she used to be involved in the church. Then her sister came out as transgender so she and her mother and sister distanced themselves, while her father and brother continued to go. Yet church clearly emerged as a big theme within our interviews.”
Once the researchers compile and analyze all the data, they will look at the way election week stress is associated with these young people’s health and whether their sense of belonging moderated its effect. And Chaku’s predication: “Kids will feel stressed during the election but in those who feel a sense of belonging, that stress will be attenuated. People who have a place to go, where they feel heard, where they’re with other people who think and act like them, will feel less stressed.”
The College of Arts