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Perceived Stress Scale

PSS-10
psychologyhealth sciencessocial sciencesFree for research use

Permission: Free for research use. Free for non-commercial academic research, with no license fee. Cite the original publication.

A 10-item self-report instrument measuring the degree to which situations in one's life over the past month are appraised as stressful, unpredictable, and uncontrollable.

Items
10
Response format
5-point frequency scale
Version
1.0

Ready-to-cite methods sentence

Perceived stress was assessed using the 10-item Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10; Cohen & Williamson, 1988), a shortened form of the 14-item PSS (Cohen, Kamarck, & Mermelstein, 1983), with four positively worded items reverse-scored. Higher scores indicate greater perceived stress (α = .78 in the original PSS-10 validation sample; Cohen & Williamson, 1988).

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Reliability & validation

Notes
α = .78 for the PSS-10 in a 1983 US national probability sample (N = 2,387; Cohen & Williamson, 1988). The original 14-item PSS had α = .84 to .86 in three samples (Cohen, Kamarck, & Mermelstein, 1983).
Source
Cohen & Williamson, 1988
Validation population
US national probability sample of adults (Cohen & Williamson, 1988)
Cronbach's α
0.78

Response anchors

Never · Almost never · Sometimes · Fairly often · Very often

Known limitations

The PSS measures subjective stress appraisal, not exposure to stressors. It was designed for respondents with at least a junior high school education, which may limit use with younger or lower-literacy samples. It is not a diagnostic instrument and has no score cutoffs. Permission requests are free and go through Mapi Research Trust (ePROVIDE).

Original citation

Cohen, S., & Williamson, G. M. (1988). Perceived stress in a probability sample of the United States. In S. Spacapan & S. Oskamp (Eds.), The social psychology of health (pp. 31-67). Sage.

Questions researchers ask

What does the PSS-10 measure?

A 10-item self-report instrument measuring the degree to which situations in one's life over the past month are appraised as stressful, unpredictable, and uncontrollable.

How many items does the PSS-10 have?

The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) has 10 items.

Is the PSS-10 free to use?

The PSS-10 is free to use for non-commercial academic research. You don't need to pay a license fee, but you should always cite the original publication.

Is the PSS-10 reliable?

Validation studies report Cronbach's α of 0.78 (Cohen & Williamson, 1988). See the reliability section for the population studied and full statistics.

Who developed the PSS-10, and how do I cite it?

Cohen, S., & Williamson, G. M. (1988). Perceived stress in a probability sample of the United States. In S. Spacapan & S. Oskamp (Eds.), The social psychology of health (pp. 31-67). Sage.

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Library entry verified September 2026. Metadata is provided for reference. Questionnaires are built in Folio Surveyor, subject to each instrument's licensing, and can be taken to Qualtrics, Google Forms or Microsoft Forms, with their CSV responses brought back for scoring.