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The Perceived Stress Scale: Evaluating Configural, Metric and Scalar Invariance across Mental Health Status and Gender

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Abstract

The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS; Cohen, Kamarck, & Mermelstein, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 24: 385–396, 1983) and its derivatives are among the most commonly used self-report measures of subjective global stress. Several factorial models of the PSS have been proposed; however, which of these structures reliably measures individuals with mental illness remains unclear. Moreover, despite the detection of gender differences in perceived stress, factorial invariance between genders has not yet been tested with the PSS. Confirmatory factor analysis evaluating six prevailing factorial models of the PSS among a large sample of psychiatric patients and a matched community sample supported a two-factor model. Multiple group analysis established configural, metric and scalar invariance of this model across gender, but only configural invariance across samples differing by mental health status. Implications are that gender differences can be cautiously interpreted as true mean differences rather than artifacts of measurement bias; however, mean perceived stress factor scores should not be compared directly across psychiatric and non-psychiatric samples.

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Notes

  1. Modified measurement period from “During the past month”.

  2. Welch’s t-test is an adaptation of the Student’s t-test used to compare two independent samples that have possible unequal variances

  3. Mplus-based WLSMV estimator uses pair-wise present analysis, that is, the analysis makes use of all cases with observations on a given pair of indicators (Muthén and Muthén 2009a).

  4. The χ 2 is sensitive to sample size and nonnormality (Meade et al. 2008).

  5. Due to inconsistent categorical outcomes between males and females for Item 6, response options 3 and 4 were collapsed for this item only in order to conduct the invariance analysis (no sampled male cases selected option 4).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Criminology Program, Wilfrid Laurier University, Brantford Campus, 73 George Street, Brantford, ON, Canada, N3T 2Y3

    Jennifer A. A. Lavoie

  2. Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

    Kevin S. Douglas

  3. Mid-Sweden University, Sundsvall, Sweden

    Kevin S. Douglas

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  1. Jennifer A. A. Lavoie
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  2. Kevin S. Douglas
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Correspondence to Jennifer A. A. Lavoie.

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Lavoie, J.A.A., Douglas, K.S. The Perceived Stress Scale: Evaluating Configural, Metric and Scalar Invariance across Mental Health Status and Gender. J Psychopathol Behav Assess 34, 48–57 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-011-9266-1

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