Tests of the Construct Validity of Occupational Stress Measures With College Students: Failure to Support Discriminant Validity

Measures of occupational stress typically correlate highly with each other as well as with supposedly distinct constructs such as depression and anxiety. In this study, intercorrelations among stress, anxiety, and depression scales in 129 Ss were examined as well as the ability of measures of depres...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of counseling psychology 1991-01, Vol.38 (1), p.91-97
Main Author: Meier, Scott T
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anxiety
Biological and medical sciences
College Students
Construct Validity
Depression (Emotion)
Depression (Psychology)
Discriminant Validity
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Higher Education
Human
Medical disorders
Memory
Mental depression
Occupational psychology
Occupational Stress
Occupations
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Psychometrics
Social research
Statistical Validity
Stress
Stress and Coping Measures
Stress Variables
Student Attitudes
Work Attitudes
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Summary:Measures of occupational stress typically correlate highly with each other as well as with supposedly distinct constructs such as depression and anxiety. In this study, intercorrelations among stress, anxiety, and depression scales in 129 Ss were examined as well as the ability of measures of depression and anxiety to add to the predictive power of occupational stress for a recognition memory task and self-reported physical symptoms. Results indicated that the stress, depression, and anxiety measures were moderately to highly intercorrelated and were significantly related to physical symptoms. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that for physical symptoms, the depression measure added no additional variance to that accounted for by gender and stress; anxiety added a small, but statistically significant, contribution. Nonlinear relationships were suggested between stress and performance on the memory task.
ISSN:0022-0167
1939-2168
DOI:10.1037/0022-0167.38.1.91