Perceived Stress Scale

Measure Overview

This scale is designed to measure the degree to which situations in one’s life are appraised as stressful.

Measure Information

Prompt: The questions in this scale ask you about your feelings and thoughts during the last month. In each case, you will be asked to indicate by circling how often you felt or thought a certain way.

	Never (0)	Almost Never (1)	Sometimes (2)	Fairly Often (3)	Very Often (4)
In the last month, how often have you been upset because of something that happened unexpectedly?
In the last month, how often have you felt that you were unable to control the important things in your life? X
In the last month, how often have you felt nervous and "stressed"?
In the last month, how often have you felt confident in your ability to handle your personal problems?* X
In the last month, how often have you felt that things were going your way?* X
In the last month, how often have you found that you could not cope with all the things that you had to do?
In the last month, how often have you been able to control irritations in your life?*
In the last month, how often have you felt that you were on top of things?*
In the last month, how often have you been angered because of things that were outside your control?
In the last month, how often have you felt difficulties were piling so high that you could not overcome them? X

Student/Trainee
Faculty/Mentor

N/A

Cohen, S., Kamarck, T., & Mermelstein, R. (1983). A Global Measure of Perceived Stress. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 24(4), 385–396. https://doi.org/10.2307/2136404

Reverse-score items marked with an asterisk, then calculate mean scale score as with other scales

From the abstract of Cohen 1983 (see full citation for more details): “This paper provides 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….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.”

For information on the development and validity of the 14-item PSS14 and 4-item PSS4 scale, see Cohen, Kamarck, and Memelstein, 1983. We provide information on the validity and information of the 10-item PSS10 and 4-item PSS4 scales given those are the ones used by the NRMN CC teams. For more information on the development and validity testing of these measures, see Cohen and Williamson, 1988.

“Respondents were 960 male and 1,427 female residents of the United States, 18 years of age and older….a somewhat shorter version of the Perceived Stress Scale, the PSS10, was derived by dropping the four items with relatively low facotr loadings (items 4, 5, 12, and 13)….a more abbreviated version of the PSS< a four-item scale consisting of items 2, 6, 7, and 14, was previously employed in telephone follow-up interviews in smoking cessation studies….In these prior studies, the PSS4 demonstrated adequate reliability and was shown to be a useful measure of perceives stress for situations requiring a very short scale…to summarize, the three versions of the Perceived Stress Scale analyzed here all appear to demonstrate adequate internal reliability.”

Note that out of four groups using this scale, one used the PSS10 and three others the PSS4, with measures used in the PSS4 marked with an X.