Stress Check-In, Free 4-Question PSS-4 Test (1 Minute)
Take the 4-item Perceived Stress Scale (Cohen & Williamson, 1988), the gold-standard 1-minute stress check-in. Free, public-domain, instant low / medium / high banding.
What is the Stress Check-In (PSS-4)?
The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) is the most widely used psychological instrument for measuring the perception of stress, developed by Sheldon Cohen and colleagues in 1983 and revised in 1988. It captures how unpredictable, uncontrollable, and overloaded respondents find their lives over the past month, the subjective experience of stress, not a count of objective stressors.
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The PSS-4 is the shortest validated version, built for telephone interviews and rapid screening. It keeps the four items with the strongest factor loadings from the longer PSS-10 and PSS-14. Items 1 and 4 are negatively-worded stress items; items 2 and 3 are positively-worded control items that are reverse-scored. Total range is 0-16. Reliability (Cronbach α ~.60) is lower than PSS-10's ~.85, but the trade-off is one minute of your time.
JobCannon's Stress Check-In is a faithful implementation of the public-domain PSS-4 instrument with low / medium / high banding mapped from the standard 0-4 / 5-9 / 10-16 raw cutoffs. It's a self-reflection tool, not a diagnosis, a high score is a reason to look at your load and recovery, not a label about who you are.
Closely related on JobCannon: Burnout Risk Assessment, Type A / Type B Test, Emotional Intelligence Test, Focus & Energy Check-In, Big Five Personality Test, Drinking Habits Check-In, and Sleep Difficulty Check-In.
What You'll Discover
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