University Stressors Scale: A proposal for the assessment of stress in specific group populations

The present paper suggests a measure for university stressors. In order to elaborate the EEU scale (University Stressor Scale), it proceeded to do group dynamics where students were asked about their inconvenience and worry reasons. With their answers, the EEU scale was elaborated. This scale has 30 items and it has two ways for answer: the occurrence of stressor and the perceived disconfort associated to it. The aim of present paper is to test the validity of this scale. Firstly, we want to test the specificity of this scale in this group (university students). Secondly, we analyze the discriminant capacity of this scale (using as a variable the experienced symthomatology). Results show that the EEU items are representative of the real stressors of university students, and that it is a good instrument for discriminating students with good health against students with poor health. Finally, the results show that when the scale is specific, particular of a population (in this case of university students), the ocurrence of stressor by itself discriminates students with good health against students with poor health, and the perceived disconfort associated plays an accessory role.