The development of an instrument to measure occupational stress in teachers: The Teacher Stress Inventory

The content validity, factorial validity, and internal consistency reliability of a scale developed to assess occupational stress in teachers were investigated. The content validity of the scale was determined from expert opinion and appraisal data collected from 92 teachers, stress researchers and practitioners. Data collected from two samples of special education teachers ( n = 370; n = 371) and one sample of regular education teachers ( n = 433) were then subjected to factor analyses followed by varimax and oblique rotations. Six factors resulted for each of two measures: stress strength and stress frequency. Additional analyses indicated that each subscale has moderate‐to‐high internal consistency reliabilities for both strength and frequency dimensions, moderate‐to‐high correlations between the strength and frequency measures of each subscale, and a large degree of agreement for the content validity of each subscale, for each of six subscales: Personal/Professional Stressors; Professional Distress; Discipline and Motivation; Emotional Manifestations; Biobehavioural Manifestations; and Physiological‐Fatigue Manifestations.