Development And Validation of Perceived Academic Stress Scale For Adolescent Students (PASSAS)

Abstract
This study was undertaken to develop a valid and reliable instrument for assessing perception of academic stress among adolescent students. The resultant Perceived Academic Stress Scale for Adolescent Students (PASSAS) is a self-report scale that focused on measuring five constructs i.e. Academic work load, Parental Expectations, Grade Concern, Institution’s Environment and Exam pressure. The initial scale that was developed through literature review and consultations with experts, comprised 50 items. Content Validity of the scale was established via expert opinion that was used for calculation of CVR & I-CVI. Following that the number of items was reduced to 41. A study was conducted for validating the tool and data thus collected was analysed with the help of SPSS23 for dimension reduction and with SmartPLS4 for establishing Construct Validity and Internal Consistency of the scale. The Internal Consistency of PASSAS was determined through Composite Reliability. External Consistency was determined through test-retest method. The resulting value of r=0.80 shows high level of External Consistency. AVE for each construct was greater than 0.5which established Convergent Validity. Discriminant Validity was established with HTMT and Fornell-Larcker Criterion. The values generated met all the criteria. The final instrument thus developed and complete in all respects, consisted of 19 items. The results regarding reliability and validity confirmed that PASSAS is a valid and reliable instrument for assessing perception of academic stress among adolescent students.