The Perceived Occupational Stress Scale

Abstract

Abstract. This article aims to present the development and test the psychometric properties of the Perceived Occupational Stress (POS) scale, a new brief instrument aimed at rating a worker’s perception of feeling stressed at work. Six studies are conducted on an overall sample of 1,805 Italian workers, to examine both the construct and concurrent validity of the POS scale. The results demonstrate the high internal consistency (α = .82) and test-retest reliability ( r = .86) of the POS scale, as well as its structural validity and concurrent validity with the Maslach Burnout Inventory ( r = .68 with Emotional Exhaustion) and the Effort-Reward Imbalance Questionnaire ( r = .62 with Imbalance and r = .51 with Overcommitment). Moreover, the POS scale is determined to uniquely contribute toward predicting stress-related health complaints, over and above indicators of workplace stressors, as measured by the Health and Safety Executive Management Standards Indicator Tool ( R2change = .06). Overall, the present findings indicate that the POS scale is a valid and reliable instrument for self-reporting occupational stress levels, and it could be used together with existing risk assessment measures of stress, to obtain a comprehensive evaluation of work-related stress.

Diagnostic Utility of the Perceived Occupational Stress Scale

“…According to the Youden index, a POS value of 3.50 represents an optimal cut-off for identifying workers with severe somatic symptom strain. Coherently with existing literature, however, females reported higher somatic symptom strain than males (Beutel et al, 2020;Kliem et al, 2017), while no gender differences in perceived occupational stress emerged (Marcatto, Di Blas, Luis, et al, 2022). Therefore, specific POS cut-off values for female and male workers were also calculated.…”

“…Several strategies have been developed to evaluate employees' work-related stress, mainly through riskassessment measures, which evaluate exposure to occupational stressors (e.g., Cousins et al, 2004;Mucci et al, 2015;Smith, 2000), but also through checklists (Barbaranelli et al, 2018) and visual analog scales (Dutheil et al, 2017). The Perceived Occupational Stress Scale is a brief questionnaire that has been recently developed to specifically evaluate workers' perception of feeling stressed at work (Marcatto, Di Blas, Luis, et al, 2022). According to its authors, by using the POS scale along with other risk assessment measures, organizations can identify the specific sources of stress that are most impactful, allowing for targeted interventions to mitigate these factors and improve employee well-being (Marcatto, Di Blas, Luis, et al, 2022).…”

“…The Perceived Occupational Stress Scale is a brief questionnaire that has been recently developed to specifically evaluate workers' perception of feeling stressed at work (Marcatto, Di Blas, Luis, et al, 2022). According to its authors, by using the POS scale along with other risk assessment measures, organizations can identify the specific sources of stress that are most impactful, allowing for targeted interventions to mitigate these factors and improve employee well-being (Marcatto, Di Blas, Luis, et al, 2022). The POS scale was also found to be a good predictor of other stress-related outcomes, such as burnout (Marcatto, Di Blas, Luis, et al, 2022) and job satisfaction (Marcatto, Di Blas, & Ferrante, 2022b).…”

“… The Perceived Occupational Stress (POS) scale is a brief questionnaire that measures workers’ appraisal of work-related stress, that is, their perception of feeling stressed at work over the previous 6 months (Marcatto, Di Blas, Luis, et al, 2022). This scale has been developed due to the lack of multi-item tools specifically aimed at measuring perceived work-related stress.…”

“…Indeed, other available measures of stress perception, such as the popular Perceived Stress Scale (Cohen et al, 1983) or the Perceived Stress Questionnaire (Consoli et al, 1997), only yield a global, unspecific measure of life stress. On the other side, work-related stress is usually assessed through risk assessment measures, which evaluate workers’ exposure to occupational stressors but do not tell us whether, and to what degree, the workers perceive their job as stressful (Marcatto, Di Blas, Luis, et al, 2022). Thus, the 4-item POS scale was developed to specifically assess workers’ levels of occupational stress, that is, their assessment of the disagreeable physiological and psychological consequences that arise due to their powerlessness to satisfy the demands that they face at work (Suleman et al, 2018).…”