Table of Contents
Description
This measure (Job Stress Scale) was developed by Parker and Decotiis (1983). The measure uses 13 items to measure job stress along two dimensions. One dimension is time stress (feelings of being under constant pressure) and the second dimension is anxiety (job-related feelings of anxiety). Jamal and Baba (1992) used a shortened version of the Job Stress Scale consisting of nine of the items.
Reliability
Coefficient alpha values ranged from .71 to .82 (Jamal, 1990; Schaubroeck & Merritt, 1997; Xie & Johns, 1995). In Jamal and Baba (1992), alpha for the nine-item version was .83.
Validity
Job stress was negatively correlated with organizational commitment and job satisfaction and positively correlated with role ambiguity and overload (Jamal & Baba, 1992). Factor analyses have shown that time stress and anxiety are empirically distinct dimensions (Melamed et al., 1991; Xie & Johns, 1995).
Source
Parker, D. F., & Decotiis, T. A. (1983). Organizational determinants of job stress. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 32, 160-177. Items were taken from Table 2, p. 169. Copyright© 1983 by Academic Press. Reproduced with permission.
Items
Responses are obtained using a 5-point Likert-type scale where 1 = strong disagreement and 5 = strong agreement with the following statements. Items denoted with (9) were used in the nine-item version (Jamal & Baba, 1992).
Time stress items:
- Working here makes it hard to spend enough time with my family.
- I spend so much time at work, I can’t see the forest for the trees.
- Working here leaves little time for other activities.
- I frequently get the feeling I am married to the company.
- I have too much work and too little time to do it in (9)
- I sometimes dread the telephone ringing at home because the call might be job-related (9)
- I feel like I never have a day off (9)
- Too many people at my level in the company get burned out by job demands (9)
Anxiety items:
- I have felt fidgety or nervous as a result of my job (9)
- My job gets to me more than it should (9)
- There are lots of times when my job drives me right up the wall (9)
- Sometimes when I think about my job, I get a tight feeling in my chest (9)
- I feel guilty when I take time off from job (9)