What Is the Perceived Stress Scale, and What Does Your Score Mean?

The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) asks how unpredictable, uncontrollable, and overloaded your life has felt over the past month. Its 10-item version (PSS-10) is scored from 0 to 40, with higher scores meaning more perceived stress. It’s the most widely used questionnaire of its kind, but its authors are clear that it isn’t a diagnostic test: there are no cut-offs that make a score “high”. Its value is in comparing your score with your own earlier ones.

This article is general information, not medical advice. If stress is affecting your health, sleep, or daily life, talk to a health professional.

What It Measures

Cohen, Kamarck, and Mermelstein published the scale in 1983 as a “global measure” of how stressful people find their lives, rather than a count of stressful events. Two people can face the same events and feel very differently about them, and it’s that appraisal the scale captures. Its questions ask, for example, how often in the last month you’ve felt unable to control the important things in your life, or confident about handling your personal problems.

How It’s Scored

Each of the 10 items is answered from 0 (never) to 4 (very often). Four items are worded positively, such as feeling that things were going your way, and are reverse-scored (4 becomes 0, 3 becomes 1, and so on) before the items are added up. The total runs from 0 to 40.

What Your Score Means

The Laboratory for the Study of Stress, Immunity, and Disease at Carnegie Mellon University, which maintains the scale, notes that the PSS isn’t a diagnostic instrument and has no score cut-offs: scores can only be compared within a group. You’ll often see bands such as 0 to 13 “low”, 14 to 26 “moderate”, and 27 to 40 “high” online; they don’t come from the scale’s authors. The lab links to normative data from large US samples, for comparison with groups of people like you.

Using It Well

• Take it monthly, since it asks about the past month. More often, the recall periods overlap.
• Compare yourself with yourself. A rise from 12 to 20 over a few months says more than either number.
• Note what was going on, such as a deadline, a move, or an illness, so later you can see what moved it.
• Pair it with daily ratings. A single 1-to-5 stress rating each day shows the ups and downs within a month that the PSS sums up; see Why Rate Your Mood, Energy, and Stress Every Day?

Following It in Kaizora

Log the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) as a questionnaire on the Wellbeing page, answering each item, and Kaizora scores it, reverse-scoring the positive items, as Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) Score. A habit such as “at least once in 30 days” on Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) Questionnaires Logged keeps it monthly; see Habits. No default reference range is set, in keeping with the scale’s authors.

The Short Version

• The PSS-10 measures how stressful your past month felt, from 0 to 40.
• Its authors set no cut-offs; compare your scores with your own over time.
• Take it monthly, and pair it with a daily stress rating.

Sources

• Cohen S, Kamarck T, Mermelstein R, “A global measure of perceived stress,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 24, no. 4 (1983): 385–396. doi:10.2307/2136404
• Laboratory for the Study of Stress, Immunity, and Disease, Carnegie Mellon University, Scales.