INTERNET-BASED STRESS MANAGEMENT FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant) This application proposes development of an Internet-based college program for stress management called MyStudentbody.com (Stress). The program would be offered through colleges and universities to help students understand stress and learn effective, tailored stress management strategies. The program utilizes interactive technology to move students through the IDEAS process, an acronym for:(1) Identify the problem (type of stressor); (2) Determine options (types of coping skills); (3) Evaluate the coping options (4) Assess resources for carrying out the skill; and (5) Select the course of action. Accessible from each IDEAS module are general resources, including Message Boards, Ask the Expert, Resource Room, and Links. Phase I involves determining the content of the program through focus groups with college students and college health care professionals, with special attention to the concerns of minority students. A demo website will include a homepage, an interactive personalized profile, one IDEAS treatment of a sample stressor, and samples of other pages. The demo website will be subjected to an end-user review, In Phase II, we will produce the website and test the program in a clinical trial against a typical text-based informational website. A theoretically-based and effective stress management website would have great commercial viability. PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATION: College students are a highly stressed population. Post-secondary institutions recognize this and respond in several ways including providing classes, textbooks, text-based websites, and college health services. These responses are either too general or respond mainly to students in crisis. MyStudentbody.com (Stress) takes advantage of the fact that college students are among the most "wired" of all groups and desire the confidential, instant access to health information afforded by the internet. ITS has developed a Phase III partnership with Allyn & Bacon, a subsidiary of Pearson Educational, the largest college text publisher in the world, By linking the MyStudentbody.com (Stress) to the marketing of health-related textbooks, the proposed product should be exceedingly commercail successful.