DEVELOPMENT OF STRESS INVENTORY FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS: A PRELIMINARY REPORT

Stress is an all-pervading phenomenon in life. An optimum level of stress is necessary and useful for personality growth, but extremities cause’s troubles. Stress has been defined as the pressure felt by college students to meet the personal & emotional, academic and social challenges of day to day life which hampers their wellbeing. Yet there is not a single Stress Inventory for college students. Hence, the present research aims to develop Stress Inventory for College Students in order to help them to deal with it effectively. The exploratory research design was used in this study. A total of 150 undergraduate and postgraduate students studying in SHUATS and AU (Allahabad University) were taken for the purpose of the study. The study was conducted in two phases; the first phase includes focused group session of 50 students. On the basis of themes emerged in the focused group session, four open-ended questions were prepared and was administered on 100 college students. On the basis of the responses of the students, 36 major themes were generated, from which a pool of 186 items related to stress were prepared. Out of these 186 items, 30 items were eliminated using Edward’s criteria, Expert rating and judges rating. These items covered almost all probable stressful events of a student’s life. The items prepared in this study will be used for the standardization and validation of final stress inventory.