Psychometric Analysis of the Stress Appraisal MeasureRevised Among University Students

The main purpose of the present study was to investigate the psychometric properties of the Stress Appraisal Measure-Revised (SAM-R, Rowley, Roesch, Jurica & Vaughn, 2005) among Iranian university students.
A total of 300 university students (138 male, 162 female) completed the SAM-R, the Achievement Emotions Questionnaire (AEQ, Pekrun, Goetz & Perry, 2005) and the Academic Self-Efficacy Beliefs Questionnaire (ASEBQ, Zajacova, Lynch & Espenshade, 2005). The exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis methods and internal consistency were used to compute the SAM-R’s factorial validity and reliability, respectively. Additionally, to examine the construct validity of the SAM-R, the correlation between different dimensions of SAM-R with positive and negative achievement emotions and academic self-efficacy beliefs were assessed.
The results of principal component analysis (PC) and varimax rotation replicated three-factor structure of the threat, challenge and resources in our study sample. Goodness-of-fit indices of confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the three extracted factors. The correlation analyses between different dimensions of SAM-R with positive and negative achievement emotions and the total score of academic self-efficacy provided initial evidence for the SAM-R convergent validity. Internal consistency for the threat, challenge and resources dimensions was 0.88, 0.82 and 0.79, respectively.
Taken together, our findings provide evidence for the validity and reliability of the SAM-R as an instrument for cognitive appraisal among Iranian university students.