Glycated Hemoglobin as a Physiological Measure of Stress and Its Relations to Some Psychological Stress Indicators

Abstract

A counterbalanced design with two groups of nondiabetic medical students, each serving the other as a control when undergoing examination, was used to evaluate the diagnostic importance of glycated hemoglobin (HbA_ic) as a measure of chronic stress. As previous studies suggested, significant statistical differences were found for the group conditions, but no time effects. Closer examination showed a considerable overlap of the two frequency distributions, however, Using the cross point of the two curves as a cutoff, sensitivity of diagnostic decisions based on the HbA_ic scores alone would be about .6 and specificity about .7 As with most physiological measures of acute stress, the correlation coefficients of the used psychological inventories and the HbA_ic scores were generally low. Among the scales specific for the situation, only control and competence expectancy reached significance (r = −.31); among the personality traits, only anxiety and the blunting scores of the Miller Behavioral Style Scale met the significance criterion.

Index Terms:

• glycated hemoglobin
• psychological measurement
• sensitivity
• specificity
• stress

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Peter Schuck

At the time this research was carried out, Dr Schuck was a physician and psychologist at the Institute of Medical Epidemiology, Biometry, and Medical Informatics at Martin-Luther-University, Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. He is now a research fellow at the Institute of Balneology in Bad Elster, Germany.