Looking for a specific measure for assessing sources of stress among teachers: a proposal for an Italian context

The teaching profession is now recognized as a highly stressful occupation, mainly due to the increase in work demands and interaction with students. Given that in Italy there is a paucity of validated instruments that specifically measure school-related sources of stress, specifically Workload and Class Stress, this study proposes a first contribution for the validation of the Teacher Stress Inventory (TSI) in the version proposed by Klassen and Chiu (2010), including 7 items. To accomplish this, the items of the instrument were back-translated from English into Italian. A survey among Italian primary and secondary school teachers (n=269) was conducted in order to explore the psychometric proprieties of the Italian version. Results of the Exploratory Factor Analysis revealed, in accordance with expectations, a bi-dimensional factor-structure underlying the 7 items. Specifically, the first factor extracted was Classroom Stress (4 items), explaining the 59.37% of the variance, whereas the second factor comprised all the 3 items of Workload Stress (variance explained: 15.01%). All Cronbach’s alphas were satisfactory (α >.80). In addition, the significance of the correlations of both scales of TSI with burnout and another measure of stress provided evidence for predictive and convergent validity. Overall, these results suggested the validity and applicability of the instrument also in the Italian context.