Scale library · Psychology & mental health
Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10): Cohen et al. (1983)
The PSS was developed by Cohen, Kamarck and Mermelstein (1983) to measure how unpredictable, uncontrollable and overloaded people found their lives during the past month. The original had 14 items; Cohen and Williamson (1988) shortened it to 10, the most widely used version. It is common in theses on student academic stress and occupational stress among healthcare workers, bank staff and teachers, and as a mediator between job demands and turnover intention.
Cite the original, not the blog.
- Model or scale: PSS-10
- Constructs: 1
- Items: 10 (4 reverse-coded)
Original English items
Items marked (R) are reverse-coded: recode them before computing reliability or scale scores. Replace bracketed placeholders such as [system] with the name of the system, brand or organization you study.
Perceived Stress (PSS, 10 items)
| Code | Item wording | Reverse-coded |
|---|---|---|
| PSS1 | In the last month, how often have you been upset because of something that happened unexpectedly? | No |
| PSS2 | In the last month, how often have you felt that you were unable to control the important things in your life? | No |
| PSS3 | In the last month, how often have you felt nervous and "stressed"? | No |
| PSS4 (R) | In the last month, how often have you felt confident about your ability to handle your personal problems? | Yes |
| PSS5 (R) | In the last month, how often have you felt that things were going your way? | Yes |
| PSS6 | In the last month, how often have you found that you could not cope with all the things that you had to do? | No |
| PSS7 (R) | In the last month, how often have you been able to control irritations in your life? | Yes |
| PSS8 (R) | In the last month, how often have you felt that you were on top of things? | Yes |
| PSS9 | In the last month, how often have you been angered because of things that were outside of your control? | No |
| PSS10 | In the last month, how often have you felt difficulties were piling up so high that you could not overcome them? | No |
Response scale
5-point frequency scale, not an agreement scale: 0 = Never, 1 = Almost never, 2 = Sometimes, 3 = Fairly often, 4 = Very often, referring to the last month. Reverse-score PSS4, PSS5, PSS7 and PSS8 (0 becomes 4, 1 becomes 3, 2 stays, 3 becomes 1, 4 becomes 0), then sum all 10 items for a total of 0–40; higher scores mean more stress. The authors publish no diagnostic cut-off.
Recoding reverse-coded items: 0–4 scale: new score = 4 − score. For example, 0 becomes 4, 1 becomes 3, 2 stays the same.
Licence and permission
Sheldon Cohen's laboratory (Carnegie Mellon University) asks users to request permission for the PSS through Mapi Research Trust's ePROVIDE platform; the request is free and does not commit you to buying the questionnaire. Translations belong to their translators, whose permission is needed.
Sources (APA 7)
- Cohen, S., & Williamson, G. (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.
- Cohen, S., Kamarck, T., & Mermelstein, R. (1983). A global measure of perceived stress. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 24(4), 385–396. https://doi.org/10.2307/2136404
- Dao-Tran, T.-H., Anderson, D., & Seib, C. (2017). The Vietnamese version of the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10): Translation equivalence and psychometric properties among older women. BMC Psychiatry, 17, 53. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-017-1221-6
- Darwita, R. R., Savitri, P. A., Khairinisa, S., Ramadhani, A., Adiatman, M., Maharani, D. A., & Do, T. T. (2024). Comparative analysis of stress level and coping strategies due to COVID-19 pandemics among dental students in Indonesia and Vietnam. Heliyon, 10(14), e34452. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e34452
- Lee, E.-H. (2012). Review of the psychometric evidence of the Perceived Stress Scale. Asian Nursing Research, 6(4), 121–127. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anr.2012.08.004
- Nguyen, H. T. N., Nguyen, P. H., Nong, H. T. N., Vo, L. T., Nguyen, D. D., Bui, N. T., Nguyen, Y. N. T., & Huynh, G. (2026). Occupational stress, coping strategies, and associated factors among primary healthcare workers in Vietnam. PLOS One, 21(5), e0349770. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0349770
Vietnamese translation
A Vietnamese translation of every item, with sample-size advice and studies that used the scale, is on the Vietnamese page for this scale.