Development of the Psychological Stress Response Scale

Abstract

Much attention has currently been focused upon the impact of life stress on an individual's mental and physical health. A number of investigators have attempted to assess this impact. The measurements of the distressing effects of stressful events can be roughly divided into two types. One measures the degree of the potential power of life events which induce the stress. This type of measurement can not gauge individual differences in stress responses induced by a particular stressful event. The other type of measurement assesses the stress responses of an individual who actually experienced stressful events regardless of the nature of life events. Although a great variety of measures have been used to quantify stress responses, no multifarious measures are available that can assess an individual's psychological stress responses. The purpose of this research is to develop the Psychological Stress Response Scale (PSRS) in order to measure the above mentioned multifarious aspects of psychological stress responses and to examine reliability and validity of this scale. The PSRS, which has developed in Study 1,consists of thirteen subscales : four subscales designed to measure emotional responses (depressive affect, anxiety, irritation, and anger) and nine subscales designed to measure cognitive-behavioral responses (loss of self-confidence, distrust, hopelessness, worry, slowness of thinking, unrealistic wishes, helplessness, withdrawal, and restlessness). Empirical evidence to support the high reliability and sufficient validity of PSRS is reported in Studies 2 and 3. Finally, the significance of the PSRS for psychological research on stress and clinically applied research is discussed.