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

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.