Evaluation of Meditation as Stress Management Using a Cross-over Design in Graduate Public Health Students

Stress is an important feature of the lives of college students and can impact negatively on learning. The effectiveness of an in-class stress management intervention for improving course content retention was tested with a cross-over design in two introductory graduate biostatistics classes. Each class met one day per week for the duration of the semester, and was taught by the same instructor, following the same syllabus. A pretest duplicating items on the midterm and final exam was administered to all students at the first class meeting. Identical midterm and final exams were administered in both classes. During the first half of the semester, each class session in one section was preceded by a ten minute deep breathing stress management procedure (n = 29). During the second half of the semester this procedure was discontinued in the first section and implemented in the other section (n = 9). There were no significant differences by age, citizenship, or gender between the two sections of the course. While students in both classes showed significant gains in knowledge, the stress management intervention showed no significant impact on gains. A significant limitation was the size of the sample and its impact on statistical power.