Early adolescence and stress in the school context: An examination of the Student Stress Inventory-Stress Manifestations (SSI-SM).

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Introduction: Stress suffered by adolescents is often neglected. In fact, there are very few measuring instruments that have been translated into Spanish for the assessment of stress manifestations in teenagers. Method: The main purpose of this work was to analyze the psychometric properties of the Student Stress Inventory-Stress Manifestations (SSI-SM) in Spanish adolescents. The final sample comprised a total of 708 students, 308 were male, with a mean age of 13.61 years (SD = 1.08). Results: The results indicated that the SSI-SM scores presented adequate psychometric properties. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the subscales ranged between 0.69 and 0.90. Analysis of the internal structure of the SSI-SM scores, through confirmatory factorial analysis, showed that the three dimensional structure solution was the most satisfactory model. A total of 6 items of the SSI-SM showed differential item functioning by gender. SSI-SM subscales were correlated with emotional and behavioural symptoms and schizotypal traits. Statistically significant differences were found between mean scores of SSI-SM by gender and age. Conclusions: These results provided new sources of validity evidence for the SSI-SM scores in an independent sample of non-clinical adolescents. The SSI-SM seems to be a useful, brief and easy to apply self-report instrument for the screening of stress manifestations in this sector of the population.