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Stress Overload: A New Approach to the Assessment of Stress

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
American Journal of Community Psychology

An Erratum to this article was published on 18 October 2011

Abstract

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.

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Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank California State University Long Beach and the Psychology Department for making possible this five-year endeavor. Scott Roesch is gratefully acknowledged for his statistical assistance, Chi-Ah Chun and Bianca Wilson for their helpful critiques. Requests for the formatted SOS and its scoring rubric (available at no charge for research purposes) should be directed to the author at jamirkha@csulb.edu.

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  1. Psychology Department, California State University Long Beach, Long Beach, CA, 90840, USA

    James H. Amirkhan

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  1. James H. Amirkhan
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Correspondence to James H. Amirkhan.

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An erratum to this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10464-011-9476-4.

 

 

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Amirkhan, J.H. Stress Overload: A New Approach to the Assessment of Stress. Am J Community Psychol 49, 55–71 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-011-9438-x

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