Variable Details
Available Studies
MAP, MARS
Categories
Affect and Personality
Perceived stress
Perceived stress in past month - Average of 4 items
This variable is only available in MAP and MARS.
Perceived stress in the past month is measured using 4 questions from the Perceived Stress Scale, an index of the degree to which a person finds their lives unpredictable, uncontrollable, and overloading. Participants are asked to rate the frequency at which they perceived stress in the past month using a 5-point rating scale. Items 2 and 3 are flipped so that higher scores indicate more perceived stress across all items. The overall score ranges from 0 to 4 and is the mean of the individual item scores, with higher scores indicating greater levels of perceived stress.
Participants are asked the following questions:
In the past month, how often have you felt...
| Item no. | Item | Flipped |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | that you were unable to control the important things in your life? | |
| 2 | confident about your ability to handle your personal problems? | (f) |
| 3 | that things were going your way? | (f) |
| 4 | difficulties were piling up so high that you could not overcome them? |
Response choices for each item:
| Response | Value | Flipped value |
|---|---|---|
| Never | 0 | 4 |
| Almost never | 1 | 3 |
| Sometimes | 2 | 2 |
| Fairly often | 3 | 1 |
| Very often | 4 | 0 |
Note: If 3 or more items are missing, perceivedstress is not computed.