Personal Stress Solutions: Stress Navigator Workshop: About the Research

Drs. Miller and Smith began developing their Biobehavioral Model of Stress for individual diagnostic and clinical purposes, organizational analysis, and scientific research over 20 years ago. Their original version of the questionnaire, the paper-and-pencil Stress Audit, provides the essential clinical and scientific background for the Personal Stress Navigator, directly transferring all its prescriptive and diagnostic stress profiling ability to the internet.

This questionnaire is the only stress assessment instrument peer reviewed and listed in O.K. Buros’ 10th Mental Measurements Yearbook, published by the Buros Institute at the University of Nebraska, which speaks to its scientific integrity.

Reliability
As a general rule, the more items on a scale, the easier it is to attain a high reliability coefficient. The challenge was to create concise scales while maintaining high reliability, and to attain test-retest reliability. All 14 Stress Navigator scales have reliability coefficients that are more than adequate. In tests, our internal consistency coefficients ranged from .78 to .98 (with 1.00 being perfect), and test-retest coefficients ranged from .76 to .98 (again, 1.00 is perfect).

Norms
Stress Navigator norms represent a wide variety of employed people with no particular stress-related problems or illnesses. This ensures that our norms reflect the performance levels of a relatively varied and healthy group of working men and women.

Population percentile values presented for each score are based on a normative sample of 5,400 administrations from all sections of the country consisting of 58% females and 42% males.

The data from this normative sample were factor analyzed to generate 16 additional stress scores: acute stress, chronic stress, work setting, powerlessness, discrimination, social demands, personal uncertainty, marital turmoil, financial pressure, burnout, personal success, personal loss, reproduction, personal isolation, relocation, and housing demands.

Validity
All of the original research was taken from stress literature, patient interviews, and clinical experience that had been strictly scrutinized, tested and proven. We further determined validity through our own research on the Stress Navigator instrument.

One validity study conducted in a freshman college population showed differences in scores between high stress (just prior to final exams) and low stress (one week following final exams) periods were highly significant (P<.0001) with the high stress period yielding the highest on all scales. Scores were also highly predictive of grades. Respondents with high levels of stress garnered poorer grades than respondents with lower stress scores. A validation study with a government agency in Boston yielded much higher stress scores for departments identified as having higher employee turnover, higher rates of absenteeism, higher utilization of medical benefits, and more worker’s compensation claims, all accepted as stress indicators.

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