A Global Measure of Perceived Stress

This paper presents evidence from three samples, two of college students and one of participants in a community smoking-cessation program, for the reliability and validity of a 14-item instrument, the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), designed to measure the degree to which situations in one's life...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of health and social behavior 1983-12, Vol.24 (4), p.385-396
Main Authors: Cohen, Sheldon, Kamarck, Tom, Mermelstein, Robin
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Affective Symptoms - psychology
Anxiety
Behavioral disorders
Biological and medical sciences
Cigarette smoking
College students
Correlations
Diseases
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Life Change Events
Life events
Male
Perception/Perceptions/Perceptual/ Perceptivity/ Perceive/ Perceived
Personality. Affectivity
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Psychometrics
Reliability
Scale/Scales (see also Test, Index, Score)
Social behavior
Stress, Psychological - diagnosis
Stress/Stresses
Students - psychology
Symptoms
Tobacco Use Disorder - psychology
Validity/Validation
Citations: Items that cite this one
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Summary:This paper presents evidence from three samples, two of college students and one of participants in a community smoking-cessation program, for the reliability and validity of a 14-item instrument, the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), designed to measure the degree to which situations in one's life are appraised as stressful. The PSS showed adequate reliability and, as predicted, was correlated with life-event scores, depressive and physical symptomatology, utilization of health services, social anxiety, and smoking-reduction maintenance. In all comparisons, the PSS was a better predictor of the outcome in question than were life-event scores. When compared to a depressive symptomatology scale, the PSS was found to measure a different and independently predictive construct. Additional data indicate adequate reliability and validity of a four-item version of the PSS for telephone interviews. The PSS is suggested for examining the role of nonspecific appraised stress in the etiology of disease and behavioral disorders and as an outcome measure of experienced levels of stress.
ISSN:0022-1465
2150-6000
DOI:10.2307/2136404