Assessing Daily Stress with the Short Stress State Questionnaire (SSSQ): Relationships with Cognitive Slips-Failures

Abstract

Stress is an important aspect of operational settings. This article presents a study providing further psychometric and validation evidence of a short multidimensional self-report measure of stress state, the Short Stress State Questionnaire (SSSQ; Helton, 2004) based on the Dundee Stress State Questionnaire (DSSQ; Matthews et al., 1999, 2002). Participants filled out the SSSQ twice daily for 70 days, once in the morning and once at night. They also reported daily cognitive slipsfailures. Chain-P Factor Analyses of the individual items for both pre and post assessments were conducted and the relationships between the SSSQ factors and daily self-reported cognitive slipsfailures were examined. The factor analyses, as previously indicated by Helton (2004), differentiated three aspects of subjective stress: Task Engagement, Distress, and Worry. Daily post-Distress and post-Worry correlated moderately with cognitive slips. The 24-item SSSQ appears to be a reliable measure of daily stress state, potentially useful in naturalistic studies.