(April 26, 2022 at 2:08 am)John 6IX Breezy Wrote: A correlational study, for example, might attempt to explain variability in one distribution (stress) in terms of variability in another distribution (finances). Consider cross-cultural studies. If nothing else, these studies measure the degree to which a finding consistently fails to replicate from one population to the next.
Yes, I think a failure to replicate may be an important finding in itself. If nothing else, it reminds us not to be too confident.
I was imagining a study like the one you mention, which correlates stress against another variable. I can't even imagine how we could quantify stress reliably. I suppose there's a standardized checklist -- "On a daily basis, how often do you imagine your head exploding? Once a day. Twice a day. Every hour. Every waking second."
But to correlate one person's stress with another person's stress, we'd need pretty much an infinite checklist of possible stressors. I've asked my doctor a few times for anti-anxiety meds, and never once has he asked me how much caffeine I drink in a day, or whether my wife scolds me. Is my anxiety really the same as yours? I don't think science can determine that.
Then there's the cross-cultural element. What we call "anxiety" in English gets translated as 不安 in Japanese. But those characters have their own variables. 不 is easy because it just means "not" or "lack," but 安 can be "safety," "calm," "peacefulness," and other semantically related things. When telling the doc that I have 不安, I very much don't feel that I'm describing what Americans call anxiety. (Personally, unscientifically, I feel 不安 in the pit of my stomach, and anxiety in my shoulders.)
Lately people have imported the word "sutoresu," from "stress." I think this came in via engineering, from stress checks on airplane wings, etc. But there's no guarantee that the nuance has travelled properly. Nor is there any guarantee that effective treatments would be the same.
