Clinical stress assessment using a visual analogue scale

Area of Science:

• Psychometrics
• Occupational Health
• Clinical Psychology

Background:

• Clinicians need brief methods to assess distress in research and practice.
• Existing questionnaires are often too time-consuming for busy clinical settings.
• The visual analogue scale (VAS) is commonly used but lacks empirical validation for stress assessment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the discriminative sensitivity of the VAS for stress.
• To assess the interconcept validity of the VAS in relation to similar psychological concepts.
• To provide empirical evidence for the psychometric properties of the VAS in stress assessment.

Main Methods:

• Employees attending occupational health centers were randomly selected.
• Participants completed the VAS alongside either the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) or the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS).
• Analyses of variance were used to examine group effects (age, sex, marital status, parental status, occupational status) on stress scores.

Main Results:

• 763 employees participated; 501 completed the PSS and 262 the HADS.
• The VAS showed lower p-values for effects of sex, age, and occupational status compared to the PSS.
• Correlations between VAS and HADS anxiety, depression, and total scores were 0.66, 0.45, and 0.65, respectively.

Conclusions:

• The VAS demonstrates at least as much discriminative sensitivity as questionnaires for stress levels.
• Observed correlations with related constructs support the construct validity of the VAS.
• The VAS is a viable tool for assessing stress in clinical and research settings.