THE RELATIONSHIP OF PSYCHOLOGICAL RESOURC ES AND DAILY STRESSORS IN ASAMPLE OF MEXICAN ADOLESCENTS

Psychological stress is a process where environment-person relationshi p involves cognitive evaluation to determine the point where it become s threatening to the emotional balance. Thus, psychological skills dim inish the effect of daily stressors on the emotional side. Methodologi cal strength, internal consistency and construct validity of the appli ed scales were evaluated in order to attain the objective of this pape r: To evaluate the relationship of locus of control, self esteem, and impulsiveness with cognitive evaluation of familiar and social daily s tressors. in female and male adolescents, An ex-post-facto and crossec tional study was conducted with a non probabilistic sample of 423 adol escent students (7th and 9th graders), 13-15 years old, living in Mexi co City: 235 males and 188 females. The instruments applied were self administered in the classrooms. A pre-designed Adolescent Locus of Con trol Scale (9) was tested, obtaining an internal consistency of Cronba ch alpha = .74; Self Esteem Scale (20), alpha = .68, Impulsivenes Scal e (4), alpha = .70. Two scales were designed to measure the relationsh ip between locus of control, self esteem and impulsiveness with famili ar and social (refereed to best friend) stressors (9,12); in both psyc hological constructs a satisfactory internal consistency was obtained: Cronbach alpha=.86 and construct validity. Pearson product-moment cor relation analysis delimitated different profiles by sex. In males, the external locus of control -fate attribution- was significatively corr elated with Peer group Disadvantage (r=.30, p less than or equal to.00 1); an inverse correlation between self estem and peer group reject (r =-.36, p less than or equal to.001); impulsiveness obtained a higher c orrelation with school problems (r=.41, p less than or equal to.001). In females, none of the psychological resources evaluated was signific atively correlated with the established statistic level: p less than o r equal to.001. These results allow us to consider that gender prevent ive psychotherapeutic approaches are needed in order to reinforce psyc hological resources to intervene accurately on the stressful impact of daily conflicts with adolescent's peer groups and school environment.