The standard stress scale (SSS): Measuring stress in the life course

Abstract

This contribution presents the Standard Stress Scale (SSS), a new scale that has been specially developed to meet the requirements of multicohort panel studies— such as the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS)—that refer to the whole life course. Accordingly, the SSS is consistently applicable for different age groups from 14 years old onwards and is also suitable for a wide range of people, irrespective of their stage in life and employment situation. The items are applicable to (university) students; employed, unemployed, and self-employed people; housewives and -husbands; old-age pensioners; and so forth. To obtain the final 11-item Standard Stress Scale (SSS), 35 questions regarding stressful life situations, social stress, daily distress, anxiety about the future, and other stresses and strains were developed following the theoretical approach of the effort-reward imbalance model (ERI) and the demand-control model. These 35 items were pretested with different subsamples—such as students in different school types, university students, and adults—using self-administered questionnaires. The total sample of the pretest includes 372 respondents. All of the 35 original questions had a small item-nonresponse rate and a good variance among respondents. Using factor analyses, the questions with the highest factor loading in each of the dimensions were used to represent the final 11-item SSS. In some cases, when the questions with the highest loading did not perform well in the cognitive pretest, the item with the second-highest loading was chosen instead. Although the most distinct items were selected, the final 11 items of the SSS show good reliability values. The Cronbach’s Alpha values vary in a range in all subsamples from 0.58 for the unemployed to 0.66 for students. In addition, further analyses show a high correlation of the final SSS with self-rated health. The use of the SSS is free of charge but has to be cited using this publication.