Stress in General Scale

Abstract

The Stress in General Scale (SIGS) is a concise and reliable psychometric instrument developed in 2001 by Stanton and colleagues. It is specifically designed to quantify an individual’s subjective and generalized experience of stress, primarily within organizational and occupational contexts. Comprising 15 items, the SIGS captures stress as a global feeling distinct from measures of specific job satisfaction or clinical burnout inventories.

The scale’s structure is defined by two key dimensions of perceived strain: the perception of **Pressure** and the perception of **Threat**. Due to its brevity and robust psychometric characteristics, the SIGS is an efficient tool for large-scale research and assessment of environmental and work-related strain.

Keywords

Stress in General Scale, SIGS, Work Stress, Organizational Psychology, Psychometrics, Perceived Stress, Job Strain, Pressure, Threat, Psychological Measurement.

Authors

Stanton, J. M., Balzer, W. K., Smith, P. C., Parra, L. F., Ironson, G.

Purpose

The principal objective of the Stress in General Scale is to provide researchers and practitioners with an efficient yet comprehensive method for assessing generalized perceived stress, particularly among employees in professional environments. The developers aimed to create a robust instrument capable of isolating the global perception of being stressed, which often underlies, but is not exclusively tied to, specific job demands or situational stressors.

Serving as a crucial diagnostic and research resource, the SIGS enables the quantification of perceived strain. This measurement is vital for predicting key organizational outcomes, including diminished **job performance**, increased health complications, and higher **turnover intentions**. Its streamlined design supports quick administration and scoring, maximizing its practical utility in high-volume assessment settings.

Construct

The SIGS operationalizes the psychological construct of **general perceived stress**. This construct centers on the individual’s cognitive appraisal of their environment as being excessively demanding, overwhelming, or threatening. This subjective appraisal is captured through the scale’s 15 descriptive items, which reflect the frequency and intensity of stressful experiences reported by the respondent.

Empirical evidence supports a clear two-factor structure contributing to this generalized feeling of stress: the perception of **Pressure** and the perception of **Threat**. The **Pressure** dimension encompasses feelings related to high demands, being hurried, or feeling pushed by external forces. Conversely, the **Threat** dimension captures negative emotional and psychological appraisals, such as feelings of irritation, being overwhelmed, or experiencing nerve-wracking situations.

Validity

The Stress in General Scale demonstrates strong evidence of internal and **construct validity**, largely inferred from its highly reliable subscale structure and clear factor loadings. The explicit design of the 15 items to reflect the core components of perceived stress—namely **Pressure** and **Threat**—provides substantial support for its content validity.

Furthermore, subsequent research has established good concurrent validity. The SIGS shows expected correlations with other well-established stress measures, such as the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), confirming that it measures similar latent constructs. Its effectiveness is further validated by its ability to correlate meaningfully with relevant organizational outcomes, including job dissatisfaction and burnout, thus confirming its utility within applied **organizational psychology** contexts.

Reliability

The Stress in General Scale exhibits excellent reliability, specifically concerning internal consistency, which confirms that the 15 items consistently measure the intended underlying construct of general stress. The reported reliability coefficients, typically measured using Cronbach’s Alpha, are notably high across both the total scale and its constituent subscales.

• Pressure Subscale: 0.88
• Threat Subscale: 0.82
• Total Scale Reliability: 0.91

A total scale Alpha coefficient of 0.91 signifies a very high degree of homogeneity among the items, validating the scale’s overall dependability and precision for assessing generalized stress in rigorous research settings.

Factor Analysis

The dimensional structure of the Stress in General Scale is empirically confirmed through Factor Analysis. This statistical technique consistently identifies the two hypothesized main dimensions underlying the 15 items: the **Pressure** factor and the **Threat** factor. Items related to high demands and pressured feelings reliably load onto the Pressure factor, while items reflecting negative emotional appraisal, such as feeling irritated or overwhelmed, load onto the Threat factor.

Maintaining this clear two-factor structure is crucial for providing a nuanced and diagnostic understanding of perceived stress. It allows researchers to differentiate between stress arising predominantly from high workload demands (Pressure) versus stress stemming from negative emotional responses and appraisals of the situation (Threat).

Instrument

Test Type: Self-report questionnaire, psychological measure.

Format: The scale consists of 15 descriptive items. The response format varies, but common methods include:

• A 5-point Likert-type scale (1=never, 5=all of the time).
• An original 3-option format (Yes=3 points, No=0 points, Can’t decide=1.5 points).

Language Available: English (Original).

Population Group: Adults/Employees.

Age Group: Working adults (typically 18+).

Population Details: Developed specifically for application in organizational and workplace settings to gauge the general stress levels experienced by employees.

Test Methodology: Respondents are instructed to rate how accurately each of the 15 descriptive adjectives or phrases reflects their general situation or feeling.

Keywords

SIGS, Work Environment, Factor Structure, Psychometric Properties, Organizational Behavior, Strain Assessment, Likert Scale, Pressure Subscale, Threat Subscale.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Not publicly available in source material.

Affiliation Email addresses: Not publicly available in source material.

Correspondence Address: Not publicly available in source material.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Stress in General Scale was first introduced in 2001. Permissions for its use are typically managed by the copyright holders, which include the primary authors (Stanton et al.) and the publishing journal, Educational and Psychological Measurement. Researchers intending to use the scale, particularly for commercial or large-scale applications, must contact the authors or the publisher to secure appropriate authorization. Specific fee structures for scale usage are not detailed in the original source material.

Reference’s

Stanton, J. M., Balzer, W. K., Smith, P. C., Parra, L. F., & Ironson, G. (2001). A general measure of work stress: The Stress in General scale. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 61, 866–888.

Lipka, Phillip, “Sexual Minorities in the Workplace: An Examination of Individual Differences That Affect Responses to Workplace Heterosexism” (2010). All Dissertations. Paper 539. This instrument can be found online at: http://tigerprints.clemson.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1539&context=all_dissertations

Items of the Stress in General Scale

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

1. Demanding
2. Hectic
3. Calm
4. Relaxed
5. Many things stressful
6. Pushed
7. Pressured
8. Irritating
9. Under control
10. Nerve-wracking
11. Hassled
12. Comfortable
13. More stressful than I’d like
14. Smooth-running
15. Overwhelming