Dr. Suzanne Vrshek-Schallhorn, director of the SCENE Lab, has a new article in the journal Assessment. Her UNCG co-authors are clinical psychology graduate student Elli Cole, former clinical psychology graduate student Dr. Gail Corneau, and former undergraduate and postbaccalaureate researcher Christopher Meneses. Collaborators at the University of Rochester and Temple University also worked on the project.
The Perceived Stress Scale is one of the most popular measures in the field. In fact, it’s been cited more than 43,000 times! Researchers use it to gauge how much stress is going on in someone’s life. Are they really measuring that, though? Dr. Vrshek-Schallhorn and her team looked at answers from more than 1,300 adults and compared the scale with a measure of neuroticism, a personality trait that makes people more prone to negative emotions.
It turns out the two overlap a lot when it comes to feeling overwhelmed. Perceived stress scores were also more closely tied to neuroticism than to the actual stress in people’s lives as rated by trained researchers. Simply put, this well-known stress measure may tell us as much about someone’s personality as about what’s happening around them.
Read the full article here: https://doi.org/10.1177/10731911261484351
