Examining perceptions of academic stress and its sources among university students: The Perception of Academic Stress Scale

Dalia Bedewy, Adel Gabriel

Health Psychology Open · 2015 · 534 citations · 35 references

DOIFull text

Open access

Concepts

TL;DR

A new scale was created to assess perceived sources of academic stress among university students. The study aimed to develop and validate an 18‑item instrument measuring academic stress and its sources. Experts evaluated content validity, and the 18‑item scale was administered to 100 students, taking about five minutes to complete. The instrument showed acceptable internal consistency (α = 0.70), supported content validity, and factor analysis yielded four coherent, theoretically meaningful factors.

Abstract

The development of a scale to measure perceived sources of academic stress among university students. Based on empirical evidence and recent literature review, we developed an 18-item scale to measure perceptions of academic stress and its sources. Experts (n = 12) participated in the content validation process of the instrument before it was administered to (n = 100) students. The developed instrument has internal consistency reliability of 0.7 (Cronbach's alpha), there was evidence for content validity, and factor analysis resulted in four correlated and theoretically meaningful factors. We developed and tested a scale to measure academic stress and its sources. This scale takes 5 minutes to complete.

References

35