New psychometric evidences on the Dental Environment Stress questionnaire among Romanian students

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The academic environment is a challenge for dental students due to the multiple sources of stress they face. For this reason, the present study analyzes the psychometric properties of the Dental Environment Stress (DES) questionnaire. The secondary objective was to identify the specific sources of stress perceived by dental students related to gender and years of study. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted among dental students ( n = 340; M age = 22.45) from the Romanian University of Medicine and Pharmacy in October– December 2019. The factorial structure of the questionnaire was performed by means of the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and the multi group-CFA. The convergent and divergent validities were measured by associating DES with scales that measure depression, anxiety, and tension/stress (Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-21-R), perceived stress (Perceived Stress Scale-14), and life satisfaction (Satisfaction with Life Scale). RESULTS: New measure obtained supported a five-factor and thirty-item structure, which is gender invariant. All the factors within DES have a significant positive correlation with depression, anxiety, tension/stress, and perceived stress and a negative correlation with life satisfaction. The Cronbach's α coefficients are acceptable (range: 0.67–0.89). The female students perceive aspects related to performance, the relations with the faculty, clinical responsibilities, and personal life to be more stressful than males. Senior students perceive more stressed aspects related to personal life, while freshmen have higher scores on stress associated with clinical responsibilities. CONCLUSIONS: The present results show that DES has psychometric properties which are adequate for the assessment of dental stress in the case of Romanian students; nevertheless, it is necessary to extend the use of DES to students attending other universities and to dental practitioners.

Stress experienced by dental students performing clinical training in different dental disciplines: a cross-sectional study

“…It is noteworthy that fear of failing the course was the prosthodontics stressor most negatively correlated with the GPA, and fear of failing was mentioned in other studies to be one of the most important clinical stressors. 6 , 18 , 23 On the other hand, in conservative clinical training, the negative relationship was attributed to the following stressors: difficulty of provided treatment, fear of failing the course, difficulty in learning the required clinical and laboratory manual skills, stress due to comprehensive patient care, and stress due to course financial expenses. Also, fear of failing was the conservative stressor most negatively correlated with the GPA.…”