ISSN 0439-755X
CN 11-1911/B
主办:中国心理学会
   中国科学院心理研究所
出版:科学出版社

心理学报 ›› 2012, Vol. 44 ›› Issue (5): 664-679.

• • 上一篇    下一篇

大学生心理健康变迁的横断历史研究

辛自强;张梅;何琳   

  1. (1中央财经大学社会发展学院心理学系, 北京 100081) (2北京师范大学发展心理研究所, 北京 100875)
  • 收稿日期:2011-08-24 修回日期:1900-01-01 发布日期:2012-05-28 出版日期:2012-05-28
  • 通讯作者: 辛自强

Changes in College Students’ Mental Health: A Cross-Temporal Meta-Analysis

XIN Zi-Qiang;ZHANG Mei;HE Lin   

  1. (1 Department of Psychology at School of Social Development, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing 100081, China)
    (2 Institute of Developmental Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China)
  • Received:2011-08-24 Revised:1900-01-01 Online:2012-05-28 Published:2012-05-28
  • Contact: XIN Zi-Qiang

摘要: 自恢复高考至今, 中国的高等教育取得了巨大进步, 这一历史时期大学生整体的心理健康水平如何变化呢?本研究对1986至2010年间237项采用90项症状自评量表(SCL-90)的研究报告进行了横断历史的元分析, 以考察这些研究(被试为30多万名大学生)所测心理问题的9个因子得分随年代的变化趋势。结果表明:(1)SCL-90各因子均值与年代之间均呈负相关, 年代可以解释9个因子4%至36%的变异; 25年来9个因子均值分别下降了1%至13%, 其中偏执、人际关系、抑郁、敌对因子变化较明显。这说明25年来大学生的心理问题逐渐减少, 即大学生心理健康的整体水平逐步提高。(2)25年来大学生心理健康水平的提高, 主要体现在大学一年级以上的学生上, 而且重点大学学生(较之非重点大学)、城市生源学生(较之农村)、男生(较之女生)的心理健康改善更快。

关键词: SCL-90, 心理健康, 大学生, 横断历史研究, 元分析, 变迁

Abstract: What changes have taken place in Chinese college students’ mental health since the resumption of college entrance examination in 1977? Many researchers tried to answer this question by using the Symptom Checklist 90 (SCL-90). However, these researchers drew different conclusions: someone found that college students have significantly decreased in mental health since the 1980s and they were a high risk group, while others found that college students’ mental health was good in general and has become better since then. Generally speaking, the traditional meta-analysis is an available method to solve these controversies; it can obtain a general conclusion by re-analyzing studies published before. However, it is a pity that these meta-analysis studies still arrived at conflicting conclusions about college students’ mental health, mainly due to their neglect of publication year effect and using different norms. Given this neglect, Twenge (2000, 2001, 2004, 2011, etc.) introduced a special meta-analysis named cross-temporal meta-analysis, which has been applied to examine the change in mean scores on psychological measures over time.
Using the cross-temporal meta-analysis, the present study examined the changes of Chinese college students’ scores on the SCL-90 in the past 25 years (1986~2010). Two hundred and thirty-seven samples of college students (N = 318972) were included in the data. The analysis not only included the description of the nine factorial mean scores of the SCL-90 changing over time as a whole, but also included the changes of different groups separately.
The results showed that: (1) Correlations between SCL-90 mean scores and year of data collection were negative, and the year could explain 4%~36% of the total variation of the nine factorial mean scores. The SCL-90 factorial mean scores have decreased 1%~13% from 1986 to 2010, with factorial mean scores of interpersonal sensitivity, depression and hostility decreasing more significantly. These results suggested that Chinese college students’ psychological problems have decreased and their mental health has been improving gradually over the past 25 years. (2) The correlation between year and college students’ mental health was different from group to group. First, year of data collection accounted for more variations for post-freshmen than freshmen, suggesting that the increase of college students’ mental health was mainly due to post-freshmen. Second, year of data collection accounted for more variations for key than non-key universities, suggesting that the improvement of college students’ mental health was mainly due to those from key universities. Third, although most of male students’ factorial mean scores of the SCL-90 were lower than that of female students, the changes over time of male students were higher than that of female students, that is, male students improved more rapidly than female students in mental health. Fourth, though college students from urban areas have slightly lower scores than college students from rural areas on the dimensions of the SCL-90, the changes over time of college students from urban areas were partly higher than college students from rural areas, suggesting that the mental health of college students from urban areas improved more rapidly than college students from rural areas.

Key words: SCL-90, mental health, college students, cross-temporal meta-analysis, meta-analysis, social change