Explaining Temporal Trends in School‐Related Stress: A Decomposition Analysis of Repeated Swedish Survey Data

Abstract

Concerns related to school are consistently ranked as among the greatest stressors in the lives of adolescents. Research from varying contexts report rising rates of school‐related stress among students, but we currently lack knowledge on what drives these trends. The aim of this study is to investigate the predictors of temporal trends in school‐related stress in Swedish students between 2003 and 2020. To this end, repeated surveys of 9807 Swedish students aged 16 years are analysed using Blinder‐Oaxaca decomposition techniques. The results show that the rise in school‐related stress was primarily due to growing schoolwork difficulties and social exclusion among students, indicating possibly adverse consequences of a large‐scale educational reform as well as of the COVID‐19 pandemic. In addition, rising academic aspirations contributed to the increase, in line with arguments concerning the increasing weight attached to educational success among adolescents in the ‘schooled society’.