Development and Psychometric Validation of a 12-item Scale Measuring Perceived Academic Stress of Adolescents

• In Event: Academic Development of Chinese Adolescents: A Systematic Perspective of Child, Family, School, and Culture

Abstract

Background:
Academic stress is prevalent among adolescents around the world (Banks & Smyth, 2015; Lee & Larson, 2000; Zhao et al., 2015). It has been associated with various negative outcomes across academic, social, emotional, and health domains (Carollo et al., 2022; Fu et al., 2022; Kim, 2021; Randall et al., 2019; Shen et al., 2021). Despite the prevalence and impact of academic stress, especially among secondary school students, very few studies in recent decades were to develop measures on this construct. The current study presented the development and psychometric validation of a new scale measuring adolescents perceived academic stress, addressing shortcomings of existing scales in scale development (Ang & Huan, 2006; García-Ros et al., 2018; Sun et al., 2011).

Method:
The sample consisted of 903 Chinese adolescents (52.1% female) from three public secondary schools in southern China. The average age of participants was 14.9 (SD = 1.8) years old. Participants completed an electronic survey, which included demographic questions, the 10-item Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10; Cohen et al., 1983), and 30 initial items for the new scale under development. Participation was voluntary and anonymous. The sample was randomly divided into two sub-samples for analyses. Sample 1 (N = 301; 51.2% female, 66.8% high school students) was used for exploratory factor analysis of the initial 30 items. Once a clean factor structure was achieved through item elimination, sample 2 (N = 602; 52.5% female, 66.5% high school students) was used for confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), reliability and convergent validity analyses, and measurement invariance testing using multiple-group CFA models. After that, subgroup differences for the multiple factors of adolescents perceived academic stress were examined across gender and school level.

Results:
The Academic Stress Scale for Adolescents (ASSA), a 12-item multidimensional scale measuring adolescents perceived academic stress, was developed. Items are rated on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = Strongly disagree to 5 = Strongly agree) with higher scores representing greater perceived academic stress. The ASSA contains three factors: Academic Burden, External Expectations, and Self Expectations, all of which were positively associated (p < .001) with the Perceived Helplessness factor from the PSS-10. The reliability was .95 for the ASSA and ranged from .86 to .96 for subscales. Measurement invariance by gender (female vs male) and school level (middle school vs high school) was supported. In terms of subgroup differences, female students perceived greater academic stress related to Self Expectations than males (β = 0.23, sd = 0.06, p < .001), but there were no gender differences in Academic Burden and External Expectations. High school students perceived greater academic stress on all three dimensions than middle school students (p < .001).

Conclusion:
Besides raising attention to adolescent mental health, the findings suggest that adolescents perceived academic stress is a multidimensional construct and functions differently by gender and school level. Therefore, specific dimensions and subgroup differences should be considered when considering this construct in both research and intervention.

Authors

• Yawei Huang, Boston University

• Jonathan Zaff, Boston University

• Gabriel Joey Merrin, Syracuse University

• Jennifer Greif Green, Boston University

• Michael Alan Medina, Boston University