Stress management: an assessment questionnaire for evaluating interventions and comparing groups.

A stress questionnaire was developed and administered to employees and students participating in a stress program. The questionnaire consists of three components: stressful conditions, stress symptoms, and measures used to relax. The present study focused on the validation of the stressful conditions portion. Factor analysis demonstrated that the questionnaire had three meaningful factors. Based on the analysis, composite scores were obtained reflecting these three dimensions. Alpha reliability analysis demonstrated that each of the factors was reliable at an acceptable level (r greater than .80). The first factor represented an organizational or external cluster, while the second factor reflected an internal or personal construct. The first factor was shown to correlate negatively with fatigue, worry, agitation, impatience, anger and similar symptoms, while the second factor correlated positively with these complaints. Studies of group differences revealed that defined occupational groups differed on scores for all portions of the questionnaire. In addition, groups participating in a stress management course changed significantly on the first two factors. The third factor related to handling conflict and contained only a few items. Replication studies showed that the factors were stable across different versions of the scales with different groups. The results suggest that the assessment method may be promising for future studies on stress management.