Student stress : a preliminary investigation into the school-related stress experience of year 8 students, using a hassles and uplifts approach

Abstract

This study sought to develop a hassles and uplifts scale as a measure of the school-related stress experienced by year 8 students in post-primary schools.

A draft set of 167 items was developed after reviewing other scales that purport to measure stress, reviewing the broader popular literature on stress in young people and the authors informal discussions with year eight students over a number of years.

The 167 items were then subjected to a simple consensual validation procedure using a small group of year 8 male and female students. A draft scale of 87 items emerged from this process.

The draft scale was administered to 875 year 8 students in ten varying types of schools, including coeducational, single sex girls, single sex boys, urban, nonurban, government and nongovernment. The instrument was administered by suitably briefed classroom teachers.

The responses of students were subjected to factor analysis. Preliminary whole-scale analysis indicated a high level of reliability. As a further indicator of the reliability of factors 14 factors were found to replicate across analyses (orthogonal rotation c.f. oblique rotation) of the whole group. The group was randomly split into two subgroups and the the analysis conducted on each subgroup. Eight factors appeared to replicate or substantially replicate across groups when an varimax solution was computed for each subgroup. Similarly, eight factors were found to replicate across subgroups. Key factors emerged from the analysis.

It was concluded that, while further work was necessary in followup to this minor trial, a reliable and valid hassles and uplifts scale can be satisfactorily developed for the specific age group of students. Suggestions for the followup work and further research are outlined in the conclusion of this study.