Perceived Stress Scale PSS
Perceived Stress Scale PSS overview
Creator and Context
The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) measures how unpredictable, uncontrollable and overloaded a person finds their life. It measures the appraisal of stress, not exposure to stressors.
It was developed by Sheldon Cohen, Tom Kamarck and Robin Mermelstein and published in 1983 as a 14 item scale. The 10 item version, published by Cohen and Williamson in 1988, is now the standard.
Permission is routed through Mapi Research Trust, and requesting it is free of charge.
Presenting Conditions
The PSS measures perceived stress as a single global construct. It asks how often, in the last month, the person has felt unable to control the important things in their life, felt confident about handling problems, felt things were going their way, and felt difficulties were piling up beyond their ability to cope.
The developer treats it as a single score. Some factor analytic work reports two factors, but that is not the recommended scoring.
Administration
Self administered in two to three minutes. Each item is rated Never (0), Almost never (1), Sometimes (2), Fairly often (3) or Very often (4), in relation to the last month.
The developer notes that the psychometrics have not been established for any other recall period.
Desired Audience
Adults and adolescents in community samples. It is not condition specific.
Two people can face the same circumstances and be affected entirely differently, and it is the appraisal, not the circumstance, that predicts the health outcome. The PSS measures the appraisal, which is why it has held its place for forty years.
Considerations
There are no cut off scores. Cohen's own guidance states plainly that the Perceived Stress Scale is not a diagnostic instrument, that there are no score cut offs, and that there are only comparisons within your own sample.
The widely circulated bands of 0 to 13 low, 14 to 26 moderate and 27 to 40 high are not endorsed by the developer and have no cited validation source. Do not use them.
It measures appraisal, not stressor exposure.
Extending the recall window beyond one month is unvalidated.
How to score the Perceived Stress Scale PSS
Conducting the assessment
The person rates ten items from 0 to 4 for the last month. Four positively worded items are reverse scored before summing.
Interpretation
For the PSS-10, four items are reverse scored and all ten are summed, giving a total from 0 to 40. The PSS-14 gives a total from 0 to 56. Higher scores indicate greater perceived stress.
There are no official cut offs. Interpretation is by comparison within your own sample, or against published normative data from US probability samples.
Clinical Considerations
Do not band the score. The developer explicitly rejects cut offs, and the bands circulating online are unsourced.
Use it comparatively: against a baseline, against a comparison group, or against published population norms.
Keep the one month recall window. Changing it invalidates the psychometrics.
Perceived Stress Scale PSS use cases
Measuring perceived stress in adults and adolescents
Comparing groups or tracking change within a sample
Workplace, health and population research
Programme evaluation where stress is the target
Category
Stress Management
Research Summary
Cohen, S., Kamarck, T., & Mermelstein, R. (1983). A global measure of perceived stress. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 24(4), 385 to 396.
Cohen, S., & Williamson, G. (1988). Perceived stress in a probability sample of the United States. In S. Spacapan & S. Oskamp (Eds.), The Social Psychology of Health (pp. 31 to 67). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Cohen, S., & Janicki-Deverts, D. (2012). Who's stressed? Distributions of psychological stress in the United States in probability samples from 1983, 2006, and 2009. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 42(6), 1320 to 1334.
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Some assessments are copyright protected and require a licence or the copyright holder's permission for clinical, commercial or digital use. Where that applies, obtaining and maintaining that permission is the responsibility of the practice or organisation using the assessment. Tacklit provides the digital administration, scoring and reporting. We do not grant, transfer or supply rights to the underlying instrument.
