gms | German Medical Science

Background: The “Avaliação de Estresse Estudantes de Enfermagem” (Instrument for Assessing Stress in Nursing Students) aims to measure the occurrence of stress factors in several academic settings and it was already applied in different Brazilian regions. However, abbreviated instruments (reduced number of items and dimensions) have few benefits, such as: shorter time to fill the questionnaire; better adherence of the sample to the research; and lower risk of responses induced by fatigue, specially, when the tool has a large number of items.

Purpose: To validate a short version of the “Instrument for assessing stress in nursing students” in the Brazilian context.

Methods: This is a methodological study conducted with 1057 nursing students from five Brazilian universities who filled the 30 items of the original instrument, initially organized in eight domains The R statistical package and the complement latent variable analysis were used for data analysis that included confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis, Cronbach’s Alpha and item-total correlation.

Results: The short version of the instrument showed 19 items allocated in four domains: Environment, Professional Training, Theoretical Activities and Performing Clinical Activities. Confirmatory factor analysis attested Absolut and Parsimony fitness to the proposed model, with satisfactory levels of residues. Alpha values per factor ranged from 0.736 (Environment) a 0.842 (Performing Clinical Activities).

Conclusions: The short version of the instrument has construct validity and reliability to measure stress in Brazilian nursing students in any phase of the college degree.