Measuring the immeasurable! An overview of stress & strain measuring instruments

Measurement of stress has been a subject of interest for many researchers and an extensive amount of literature has been devoted to this topic however despite the popularity of "stress" as a research topic, researchers still do not agree on a common definition of this controversial subject (Rees & Redfern, 2000). According to Person-Environment fit (PE-Fit) theory (French & Kahn, 1962; French et al., 1974), stress and strain at job comes into action from the interaction of individual with environment and particularly when job challenges pose a threat to individual which ends up in incompatible PE-Fit, leading to stress related physical and psychological strains (Edwards & Cooper, 1990, French, Caplan, & Harrison, 1982). PE-Fit and Demand-Control (Karasek, 1979) models developed to explain the job stress and strain have guided the construction of most measures of occupational stress (Vagg & Spielberger, 1998). This article in particular aims to discuss few of the most important stress and burnout measurement instruments designed so far and intend to offer recommendations regarding instrument selection. Furthermore this article shall also discuss the pros and cons of stress assessment approaches in general, with few suggestions for improvement.