Construction of a Housing Stress Scale

Abstract

Many environmental psychology studies enhance the relevance of identifying dwelling conditions as a stressing factor for residents. For which, they alerted about the importance of generating valid and reliable instruments that enable research to measure dwellers stress levels caused by such living condition in Mexico City. The scale was conformed by 37 items with four answering options. To obtain participants psychometric properties, it was applied to 380 parents from Mexico City, ages ranging from 18 to 76 years, with different occupations and school levels. Data was analyzed using the SPSS (21th. version) to identify the items discriminatory power, internal consistency, exploratory analysis variance, and Pearson´s correlation. The final scale was made up by 28 items, each distributed in four factors with a total alpha of .930. In conclusion, these results reveal a valid and reliable instrument, as well as valuable tool for studying housing stress.