Perceived Stress Scale

PSS-10

psychologyhealth sciencessocial sciencesFree for research use

Permission: Free for research use. Free for non-commercial academic research, with no licence fee. Cite the original publication.

A 10-item self-report instrument measuring the degree to which situations in one's life over the past month are appraised as stressful, unpredictable, and uncontrollable.

Items

Response format

5-point frequency scale

Version

1.0

Ready-to-cite methods sentence

Perceived stress was assessed using the 10-item Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10; Cohen & Williamson, 1988), a shortened form of the 14-item PSS (Cohen, Kamarck, & Mermelstein, 1983), with four positively worded items reverse-scored. Higher scores indicate greater perceived stress (α = .78 in the original PSS-10 validation sample; Cohen & Williamson, 1988).

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Reliability & validation

Notes

α = .78 for the PSS-10 in a 1983 US national probability sample (N = 2,387; Cohen & Williamson, 1988). The original 14-item PSS had α = .84 to .86 in three samples (Cohen, Kamarck, & Mermelstein, 1983).

Source

Cohen & Williamson, 1988

Validation population

US national probability sample of adults (Cohen & Williamson, 1988)

Cronbach's α

0.78

Response anchors

Never · Almost never · Sometimes · Fairly often · Very often

Known limitations

The PSS measures subjective stress appraisal, not exposure to stressors. It was designed for respondents with at least a junior high school education, which may limit use with younger or lower-literacy samples. It is not a diagnostic instrument and has no score cutoffs. Permission requests are free and go through Mapi Research Trust (ePROVIDE).

Original citation

Cohen, S., & Williamson, G. M. (1988). Perceived stress in a probability sample of the United States. In S. Spacapan & S. Oskamp (Eds.), The social psychology of health (pp. 31-67). Sage.

Questions researchers ask

What does the PSS-10 measure?

A 10-item self-report instrument measuring the degree to which situations in one's life over the past month are appraised as stressful, unpredictable, and uncontrollable.

How many items does the PSS-10 have?

The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) has 10 items.

Is the PSS-10 free to use?

The PSS-10 is free to use for non-commercial academic research. You don't need to pay a license fee, but you should always cite the original publication.

Is the PSS-10 reliable?

Validation studies report Cronbach's α of 0.78 (Cohen & Williamson, 1988). See the reliability section for the population studied and full statistics.

Who developed the PSS-10, and how do I cite it?