Virginia Research Day 2022

Medical Student Research Cl inical

05 Assessing Stress-Related Eating Habits Of Medical Students During COVID-19

Linda Mintle, PhD; Chansoon Lee, PhD; Amina Ali, OMS III; Emma Brasseur, OMS II Corresponding author: elbrasseur@liberty.edu

Liberty University College of Osteopathic Medicine

Introduction: Medical school is stressful. Previous studies have found that psychological stress and negative effects have been associated with disordered eating. An area of needed study is the impact of medical school stress on stress-related eating. Given that disordered eating is often prompted by stress, this study investigated the relationship between stress and stress-related eating during the academic year of COVID-19. Research questions: Do medical students engage in stress-related eating over the course of the first year? Is there a gender difference in stress- related eating? Is there a relationship between stress-related eating and perceived stress and does that change over time? Methods: Surveys were sent out three times during the 2020-2021 academic year via the program Qualtrics for students to rate their stress and stress-eating habits. Time point one: the beginning of the academic year, time point two: end of the first semester, and time point three: end of the academic year. Measures

No significant correlation between Stress at time point one and SSES at time point three ( r (52) = 0.027, p = 0.846). Conclusions: Based on the results from the factorial repeat measures ANOVA tests, there were no significant differences in stress-related eating between female and male students as well as across the two time points, at the beginning of a medical school year and the end of the year. The results of the correlation between Stress and SSES showed no significant positive correlation between perceived stress and stress eating. However, COVID was possibly a major confounding variable. Perhaps the reason we did not find a correlation is that students had more control over-eating since they were at home most of the academic year. This greater locus of control may have influenced stress perception and behavior. Future direction would include repeating this study in a non-COVID year to see if stress eating is or is not a significant issue in medical student responses to stress.

included the Cohen Self-Perceived Stress Scale and the Salzburg Stress Eating Scale. Students were asked to rate their self-reported stress and stress eating. Data collected were de-identified, coded, converted from text to numeric scoring for analysis. 54 students participated longitudinally. A factorial repeated measures ANOVA was run with the outcome variable being Stress Eating (SSES), the between-group variable being Gender, and the within-group variable being Time at the periods noted. Also, Pearson correlation was used to examine the positive relationship between Stress and SSES. Results: Results from the ANOVA tests showed that there were no significant differences in SSES across the time points: F (1, 52) = 0.144, p = 0.706 nor in SSES between gender: F (1, 52) = 2.497, p = 0.120. Correlation between Stress and SSES showed no significant correlation at two time points ( r (52) = 0.154, p = 0.267 at time point one; r (52) = 0.029, p = 0.835 at time point three).

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