This study examines the effects of social support on the relationship between job stressors and mental health. Job stressors (role conflict, role ambiguity, underutilization of skills, quantitative work overload, qualitative work overload) and social support (emotional and instrumental support from co-worker, senior colleague and supervisor) were used to predict employees' mental health (depression) among 590 female employees.
The results showed that 1) senior colleague support had more important implications for mental health than did supervisor or co-worker support. 2) Senior colleague and supervisor support had buffering effect, but co-worker support had little buffering effect. 3) The form of the interaction was different from the predictions of the buffering hypothesis in emotional support from supervisor.

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The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of stress management(SM) education in an elementary school environment. In Experiment I, intervention effects on state anxiety were assessed using a within-subjects design. The SM education consisted of three phases(introduction, awareness training, and relaxation) over a three week period. Subjects (20 males and 19 females) completed the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children (STAIC) before and after the second(S1) and third (S2) SM, Japanese Language (L), and Physical Education (PE) programs in different days. Results showed that two SM programs clearly improved state anxiety after each program although the L and PE programs did not show a difference between the pre and post-tests. In S2, females had lower state anxiety scores in the post-test than did the males. In Experiment II, two SM classes and one control class were compared in a between-sulbjects design. The first SM class (E1) was enhanced by respiration training and the other (E2) performed relaxation training. The control class (C) studied Japanese language instead of SM. All children completed the STAIC before and after the program. Results showed the E1 and E2 had a significantly lower state anxiety in the posttest than in the pretest after controlling for trait anxiety,while the C did not improve over time. The results of both experiments indicate that SM education significantly reduces state anxiety even after brief exposure. Specific implications for examining the effect of SM education for children were discussed along with recommendations for the future research.

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This study tested the psychological stress process of university students (N=610) by administering the Stress Self-Rating Scale (SSRS; Ozeki, 1993), based on Lazarus and Folkman's (198a) transactional model of stress.
The SSRS consisted of stressors, the impacts of mental and physical complaints as stress responses and moderators such as perceived social support, a sense of humore and coping. A covariance structural analysis was applied to the model derived from the data of the results which had been obtained by a maltivariate analysis and factorial analysis, respectively. The present results showed that (1)perceived stress responses increased as the aversiveness of stressors increased, (2)as perceived stress responses increased, active and passive coping also increased, (3)a sense of humore and active coping attenuated the perceived stress responses, (4)a sense of humore intensified perceived social support, (5)social support elicited active coping. These findings suggest that the model obtained by this study is useful for predicting the transactional process of psychological stress.

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The purpose of this paper was to consider the acquisition, maintenance, and extinction of human food aversions. Questionaires concerning food aversions and preferences were completed by 243 collage students (102 males, 141 females).
Food preferences patterns reported by the subjects who acquired the aversions were similar to those by the subjects who had extinguished them. The aversions were acquired mostly before 12 years old, especially in 4-6 years old. Some of them were extinguished mostly after 13 years old. In particular, many of aversions acquired in 7-9 years were extinguished. Those, however, acquired before six years old tended to be maintained longer than those in 7-12 years. Those after 13 years old also tended to be maintained.
Those acquired by the subjects were positively related to those by their family members.

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The purposes of this study were to develop the Stress Response Scale for Children(SRS-C) which measures slight stress responses of elementary school children in a daily school life setting, and to examine its reliability and validity.
In study I, after selecting items which state stress responses in school, factor analysis of data by 2,160 children revealed that the SRS-C has four main factors; “physical states”, “depressive-anxlous feeling”, “irritated-angry feeling” and “helplessness”. As a result,the SRS-C including 20 items was developed.
In study II, psychometric analyses showed that the SRS-C has enough high reliability by test-retest method and split half method, and from the viewpoint of internal consistency. Furthermore, SRS-C scores were compared among three groups; HS-group which showed high stress responses, LS-group which showed low stress responses, and MS-group which showed moderate stress responses. As results of ANOVAs, it was revealed that SRS-C scores of HS-group were higher than other groups. It was suggested that the SRS-C had high clinical validity, content validity, and construct validity. It was also suggested that the SRS-C had enough possibility to measure slight stress responses of elementary school children.
Finally, the significance of measuring stress responses in psychological stress studies and possibilities of clinical application of the SRS-C were discussed.

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