focus more on an individual’s own perception of stress. The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS,
Cohen et al. 1983) is the most commonly used scale to assess self perceived stress and
asks questions such as ‘In the last month how often have you been upset because of
something that happened unexpectedly?’, and ‘In the last month how often have you felt
nervous or stressed?’. Some researchers also assess minor stressors in the form of ‘daily
hassles’. Kanner et al. (1981) developed the Hassles Scale which asks participants to rate
how severe a range of hassles have been over the past month including ‘misplacing or
losing things’, ‘health of a family member’ and ‘concerns about owing money’. Self-
report measures have been used to describe the impact of environmental factors on stress
whereby stress is seen as the outcome variable (i.e. ‘a poor working environment causes
high stress’). They have also been used to explore the impact of stress on the individual’s
health status whereby stress in seen as the input variable (i.e. ‘high stress causes poor
health’).
Costs and benefits of different measures
Physiological and self-report measures of stress are used in the main to complement each
other. The former reflects a more physiological emphasis and the latter a more psycho-
logical perspective. A researcher who has a greater interest in physiology might
argue that physiological measures are more central to stress research, whilst another
researcher who believes that experience is more important might favour self-report. Most
stress researchers measure both physiological and psychological aspects of stress and
study how these two components interact. However, in general the different types of
measures have the following costs and benefits:
1.Physiological measures are more objective and less effected by the participant’s wish
to give a desirable response or the researcher’s wish to see a particular result.
2.Self-report measures reflect the individual’s experience of stress rather than just what
their body is doing.
3.Self-report measures can be influenced by problems with recall, social desirability,
different participants’ interpreting the questions in different ways.
4.Self-report measures are based upon the life events or hassles that have been
chosen by the author of the questionnaire. One person’s hassle such as ‘trouble-
some neighbours’ which appears on the hassles scale may not be a hassle for
another whereas worries about a child’s school might be which doesn’t appear on this
scale.
Associations between research in different settings using different measures
Given that stress research takes place in both the laboratory and in more naturalistic
setting and uses both physiological and self-report measures it is important to know how
these different studies relate to each other. This is illustrated in Focus on research 10.1
below.
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