Assessing Stress in Teachers: Depressive Symptoms Scales and Neutral Self- Reports

The focal interest of this chapter on teacher stress is methodologic. The purpose is fourfold. First, the chapter enumerates a number of defects in existing measures of job stress in teachers and, concomitantly, other helping professionals. Second, alternative ways of measuring stress in teachers are suggested and evaluated. In the section on these alternatives, the use of depressive symptom scales in concert with more “objective” measures of the work environment is discussed. Third, an application of the proposed alternative measurement strategy is described. Finally, the wider utility of the measurement strategy is briefly described.