<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Background: Stressor experience is an important topic of research concerning adolescent health and ill-health. For this, valid and reliable measures of adolescent stress are needed. The Adolescent Stress Questionnaire 2 was developed to tap into stressor domains specific for adolescence. Psychometric evaluations in Australian and European samples have indicated adequate psychometric properties. However, the ASQ-2 is quite extensive, which may render its use in large cohort studies, where several aspects of adolescent health are investigated, inconvenient and problematic.Objective: To evaluate the psychometric properties of a short version of the ASQ-2 (ASQ-S) in terms of construct validity and factorial invariance across gender.Method: The ASQ-2 was translated into Swedish and items were retained from nine of the ten scales based on factor loadings. One scale (stress of emerging adult responsibilities) was removed entirely due to low internal consistency and variance explained. The remaining 27 items were piloted and then included in an ongoing 5-year longitudinal study involving the participation of all students in the 7th and 8th grade in public schools from three Swedish municipalities (N = 2768, 47.5 % girls, mean age 13.64 years). For this study data from the first and second wave was used.Results: A nine factor Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) showed a good fit to the data and invariance across sexes was supported. The nine scales correlated positively with depressive symptoms, anxiety and worry and negatively with self-esteem. Girls reported higher stress levels than boys in eight of the nine scales. Stressors related to peer pressure predicted reported levels of anxiety and worry one year later, whereas stressors related to romantic relationships predicted depressive symptoms.Conclusions: Overall this study suggests that the ASQ-S could be a valid measure of adolescent stressor experience and psychometrically equivalent to the full ASQ-2.</abstract>

Background: Stressor experience is an important topic of research concerning adolescent health and ill-health. For this, valid and reliable measures of adolescent stress are needed. The Adolescent Stress Questionnaire 2 was developed to tap into stressor domains specific for adolescence. Psychometric evaluations in Australian and European samples have indicated adequate psychometric properties. However, the ASQ-2 is quite extensive, which may render its use in large cohort studies, where several aspects of adolescent health are investigated, inconvenient and problematic.Objective: To evaluate the psychometric properties of a short version of the ASQ-2 (ASQ-S) in terms of construct validity and factorial invariance across gender.Method: The ASQ-2 was translated into Swedish and items were retained from nine of the ten scales based on factor loadings. One scale (stress of emerging adult responsibilities) was removed entirely due to low internal consistency and variance explained. The remaining 27 items were piloted and then included in an ongoing 5-year longitudinal study involving the participation of all students in the 7th and 8th grade in public schools from three Swedish municipalities (N = 2768, 47.5 % girls, mean age 13.64 years). For this study data from the first and second wave was used.Results: A nine factor Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) showed a good fit to the data and invariance across sexes was supported. The nine scales correlated positively with depressive symptoms, anxiety and worry and negatively with self-esteem. Girls reported higher stress levels than boys in eight of the nine scales. Stressors related to peer pressure predicted reported levels of anxiety and worry one year later, whereas stressors related to romantic relationships predicted depressive symptoms.Conclusions: Overall this study suggests that the ASQ-S could be a valid measure of adolescent stressor experience and psychometrically equivalent to the full ASQ-2.

Development of a Shortened Version of the Adolescent Stress Questionnaire (ASQ-S): construct validity and sex invariance in a large sample of Swedish adolescents

Scandinavian Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychology

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Background: Stressor experience is an important topic of research concerning adolescent health and ill-health. For this, valid and reliable measures of...

Development of a Shortened Version of the Adolescent Stress Questionnaire (ASQ-S): construct validity and sex invariance in a large sample of Swedish adolescents

Article Category: research-article

Published Online: Jul 10, 2018

Page range: 4 - 15

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21307/sjcapp-2018-001

Keywords
adolescents, stress measurement, psychometrics, sex invariance, emotional distress

© 2018 Malin K. Anniko et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Development of a Shortened Version of the Adolescent Stress Questionnaire (ASQ-S): construct validity and sex invariance in a large sample of Swedish adolescents

Article Category: research-article

Published Online: Jul 10, 2018

Page range: 4 - 15

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21307/sjcapp-2018-001

Keywordsadolescents, stress measurement, psychometrics, sex invariance, emotional distress

© 2018 Malin K. Anniko et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Keywords
adolescents, stress measurement, psychometrics, sex invariance, emotional distress