Researcher‐Rated “Snapshots” of Stress: Initial Validation of Two Stress Assessment Approaches and Their Relationship to Internalizing Symptoms

Extant questionnaire measures of stress frequently conflate stress exposure and response and can be confounded by factors such as trait neuroticism; by contrast, contextual interviews target stress exposure but require significant resources that are a barrier to swift data collection. We reasoned that it may be possible to use researcher-rated "snapshots" of brief participant-written descriptions of stress to obtain similar independence from trait neuroticism as interviews do, even though such an approach would not provide all the benefits of interview measures. This study evaluates the psychometric properties of this novel stress assessment approach using both researcher and self-report ratings, in part by examining the contribution of these indicators of stress to internalizing subfacets. Adults (<i>N</i> = 378) reported on their stress during the COVID-19 pandemic (May-June, 2020) using two measures that covered 11 life domains (~4158 ratings per measure). Inter-rater reliability for researcher ratings of participant stressor descriptions was good, and both self-rated perceived stress and researcher-rated stress had significantly smaller correlations with neuroticism compared to a traditional perceived stress measure, indicating favorable discriminant validity. Both approaches generated acceptable two-factor (interpersonal and noninterpersonal) structures. Interpersonal and noninterpersonal self- and researcher-rated stress were associated with internalizing facets, with some variation. These results provide initial evidence that two novel and rapid methods of measuring stress retain certain appealing properties of life stress interviews (LSIs), for occasions in which interviews are not feasible.