A three-wave longitudinal study on the relation between commuting strain and somatic symptoms in university students: exploring the role of learning-family conflicts

BMC Psychology

Jian Li¹  Peter Angerer²  Mathias Diebig²  Thomas Muth²  Jan Schmidtke²  Boris Forthmann³ 

[1] Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Fielding School of Public Health, School of Nursing, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, USA;Institute of Occupational, Social and Environmental Medicine, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Universitätsstr. 1, 40225, Düsseldorf, Germany;Institute of Psychology in Education, University of Münster, Münster, Germany;

关键词: Commuting strain;    Medical students;    Multilevel research;    Somatic complaints;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s40359-021-00702-7

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundWe examine the role of learning-family conflicts for the relation between commuting strain and health in a sample of medical university students. The first goal of the study was to investigate the mediating role of learning-family conflicts. The second goal was to extend the temporal view on relations between study variables. Therefore, we differentiated long-term systematic change among variables over a period of two-years from a dynamic perspective with repeated commuting events on the individual level of analyses.MethodsWe applied a multilevel research design and collected survey data from 128 medical students on three points in time (N = 339 measurement points). Participants informed about commuting strain, learning-family conflicts, somatic symptoms, as well as commuting distance and time.ResultsBayesian multilevel analyses showed that results differed with regard to level of analysis: while learning-family conflicts mediated the relation between commuting strain and somatic symptoms on a systematic aggregation-level perspective of analysis (indirect effect estimatebetween = 0.13, SE = .05, 95% CI [0.05; ∞), Evidence Ratio = 250.57), this was not the case on the dynamic event perspective (indirect effect estimatewithin = 0.00, SE = 0.00, 95% CI [− 0.01; ∞), Evidence Ratio = 0.84).ConclusionsWe demonstrated that learning-family conflicts explain why commuting may have unfavorable effects on health for medical students. We also showed that it is the long-term commuting experience that is related to health complaints and not the single commuting event. This means that short-term deviations from general levels of commuting strain do not cause somatic symptoms, but general high levels of commuting strain do instead.

【 授权许可】

CC BY