SEMANTIC REPRESENTATION APPROACH TO THE C ONCEPT OF STRESS IN MEXICANADOLESCENTS

Stress is a relationship established between a person and his environm ent; it appears when the demandings from reality overpass the indivual 's coping skills. This phenomenon may occur at different moments and i n several ways as a psychosomatic illness or as a matter of general in terest. The purpose of this study is to know how a group of Mexican ad olescent students (80 women: 40 from junior high and 40 from senior hi gh school; and 80 men: 40 from junior high and 40 from senior high sch ool), from private schools, consider stress. The semantic networks tec hnique was used as the research instrument because it evaluates the co mplex aspects and values of people besides being easy to manipulate. T he results show that the higher his school grade the more homogeneous his stress conceptualization is. This might be explained because of th eir access to information, articles, lectures, etc. on items which det ermine the human behavior. The existence of social representations in higher school grades emerge from common sense and develop and improve with time. These structures influence knowledge and concepts created f rom belonging to a special social system.