Stress Perception Research

Individuals can assess felt stress using a variety of psychological tools. In this scenario, we employ a tool known as the perceived stress scale, which asks a series of questions to an individual who is intended to respond on a scale of 1 to 5. Each question is designed to be answered in the shortest amount of time feasible because it reveals exactly how the individual feels and establishes the level of the stressful circumstance. You are also expected to respond to how you feel about certain events in your daily life. In the questions below, you are supposed to count and answer the number of times and how felt about a number of natural events occurring in your life in a span of the past one month.

Scale: Never=0, Almost never=1, Sometimes=2, Fairly often=3, Very often=4

Never

Almost Never

Sometimes

Fairly Often

Very Often

Q1. How often have you felt that things are going your way in the past month?

0

1

2

3

4

Q2. During the last month, how often have you felt that things are going contrary to your expectations?

0

1

2

3

4

Q3. During the last month, how many times have you felt anxious, Tensed Or stressed?.

0

1

2

3

4

Q4. During the last month, how often have you felt confident that you have handled your problems in the right way?

0

1

2

3

4

Q5. During the last month, how often have you felt that you cannot cope with things that you had to do?

0

1

2

3

4

Q6. During the last month, how often have felt angered by things not happening your way or how you expected?.

0

1

2

3

4

Q7. During the last month, how often have you been able to control things that irritate you?.

0

1

2

3

4

Q8. During the last month, how often have you felt that you are in control of whatever that is happening?.

0

1

2

3

4

Q9. During the last month, how often have you felt that the situation is going out of hand and the situation is aggravating beyond your control?.

0

1

2

3

4

Q10. During the last month, how often have you been optimistic and hopeful that things will change for the better in the coming days?.

0

1

2

3

4

In conclusion, scoring of the above test is established by reversing the scores such that: 0=4, 1=3, 2=2, 1=0. The sum across the 10 questions asked. An average of 13 is considered as an average, whereas, those scores of around 20 or above are seen as highly stressed individual.

It was established that those with high scores were associated with issues such as: failure to quit smoking, obesity, failure in controlling blood sugar and a person’s vulnerability to stressful events (Cohen, 1994).

References.

Cohen S., 1994. Perceived Stress Scale retrieved on October 20, 2017 from http://www.mindgarden.com/documents/PerceivedStressScale.pdf

Cohen, S., Kamarck, T., & Mermelstein, R., 1983. A Global Measure of Perceived Stress, in Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 24 (1983), 385-396.retrieved on October 20, 2017 from http://www.psy.cmu.edu/~scohen/scales.html