Abstract

CAMPO-ARIAS, Adalberto; OVIEDO, Heidi Celina  and  HERAZO, Edwin. The psychometric performance of the Perceived Stress Scale-10 on medical students from Bucaramanga, Colombia. rev.fac.med. [online]. 2014, vol.62, n.3, pp.1-24. ISSN 0120-0011.  https://doi.org/10.15446/revfacmed.v62n3.43735.

Background. The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) is the best known instrument for quantifying emotional stress in clinical and epidemiological research; however, there is little information about PSS-10 (i.e. 10 item) psychometric performance in Colombia. Objective. Studying PSS-10's psychometric performance, internal consistency and dimensionality by using it with medical students from Bucaramanga, Colombia. Materials and methods. 366 medical students aged 18 to 30 years old (M=20.0; SD=1.9) participated in the research; 58.5% of the sample was female. The authors computed Cronbach's alpha, McDonald's omega, Mosier coefficient and made an exploratory factor analysis. Results. The PSS-10 had a 0.65 Cronbach alpha, 0.68 McDonald omega and 0.68 Mosier coefficient. Two dimensions were observed; general distress explained 35.3% variance and coping ability 23.9% variance, having low correlation (r=-0.224); general distress had a 0.82 alpha and omega and coping ability 0.83. Conclusions. The PSS-10 had low internal consistency and two dimensions which performed as independent scales having high internal consistency. This psychometric healthcare instrument's performance should be ascertained when measuring stress in Colombian university students studying other subjects.

Keywords : Stress; Psychological; Students; Medical; Reproducibility of Results; Factor Analysis; Statistical; Validation Studies.

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