Development and validation of student’s sources of stress scale

Pages: 1036-1039
Mehmoodun Nisa and Naheed Nizami (Department of Psychology, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, U.P.)

Stress is a normal human experience and common among college students as they endeavor to adjust and adapt to multiple life experiences that become a routine part of their life. It is a normal reaction to challenging situations or an ambiguous environment, but becomes a problem when environmental demands exceed a person’s adaptive capacity to cope, which becomes a threat to the well-being of a person. It’s also true that one cannot eliminate stress but it can be reduced in their life. The stressors are normative demands and critical life events include family and peer relationships, financial status, personal health, employment, career, educational plans, school grades, academic pressure, intrapersonal conflict, school environment, lack of social resources etc. These stressors are responsible for physical and psychological problems may leads to low level of mental health, self-esteem, self-concept etc. among college students, that may increases the likelihood of antisocial behaviour, rise in anxiety, drug abuse and even it may result to the extent of suicide. Consequently the present student’s sources of stress scale developed in order to provide a comprehensive measurement of stress experienced by college students. Presentscale was developed through discussion with experts in the field also items related to these sources collected from available literature, books as well as different existing tests of stress. The scale consists of 87 items all were grouped under four types of stressors namely interpersonal stress, intrapersonal stress, academic stress and environmental stress experienced by college students. Reliability and validity of the scale was also found out.