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Stress Overload: A New Approach to the Assessment of Stress
Author(s) -
Amirkhan James H.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
american journal of community psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.113
H-Index - 112
eISSN - 1573-2770
pISSN - 0091-0562
DOI - 10.1007/s10464-011-9438-x
Subject(s) - health psychology , psychology , stressor , clinical psychology , exploratory factor analysis , confirmatory factor analysis , construct validity , psychological intervention , scale (ratio) , reliability (semiconductor) , stress (linguistics) , psychometrics , public health , social psychology , structural equation modeling , medicine , psychiatry , statistics , power (physics) , physics , linguistics , nursing , mathematics , philosophy , quantum mechanics
The link between stress and health has not received strong empirical support, possibly due to problems in the stress measures used. Here, the first wholly empirical development of a new “Stress Overload Scale” is described. A pool of 150 items was formed to reflect “overload”, a common denominator in stress theories. Then, the results of five sequenced studies, conducted in heterogeneous community samples, were used to pare the item pool. Exploratory ( n = 431) and confirmatory ( n = 433) analyses revealed two factors (Event Load and Personal Vulnerability) corresponding to theoretical constructs; only the best factor markers were submitted to further construct validity ( n = 310) and reliability tests ( n = 342). The 24 strongest items were selected for the SOS, which demonstrated criterion validity in predicting who ( n = 285) would become sick following a common stressor. The SOS is (1) psychometrically strong, especially in its validity relative to popular measures; (2) appropriate to community research, due to its brevity and fit to a broad demographic spectrum; (3) unique in its ability to cross‐section individuals into risk categories. It should prove useful to community psychologists in determining etiology, diagnosing risk for pathology, and evaluating the efficacy of interventions.