Stress in a Seminar on Stress: A Methodological Study

Abstract

16 graduate students in a seminar on stress responded to a 30-item adjective scale (anxious, tense, weak, etc.) during a nonstressful situation and again after a difficult test was introduced. The Incremental R-technique of factor analysis applied to the 30 × 30 difference-score correlation matrix yielded 10 factors, whose structure clearly indicated the hypothesis-generating possibilities of this analytical method, which should be applied to a larger data base.