A Study of Factor Structure and Psychometric Adequacy of the Educational Stress Scale (ESS)

Background: The concept of educational stress is considered an important construct in education and has attracted the attention of many researchers. Objectives: This research was conducted with the goal of investigating validity, reliability, and factor structure of Sun, Dunne, Hou and Xu educational stress scale in Iranian high school students. Methods: By using random cluster sampling, 300 high school students (male and female) were selected from Babolsar city as participants for this research. Participants completed the educational stress scale and data were analyzed using Amos (v. 22) and SPSS (v. 22) software. Factor analysis was performed by exploratory and confirmatory analysis. Results: The results of factor analysis revealed the presence of 4 dimensions (workload and pressure from study, self-expectation, worry about grades, and despondency). The internal consistency estimate of reliability for this scale and subscales were in the range of 0.63 to 0.80. Conclusions: The results illustrated that this scale has goodness of fit and could be applied in related research.