Academic Stress in Dental Students Analysis: Questionnaire Design and Validation Study

Objective

To develop and validate a comprehensive questionnaire to assess academic stress, integrating academic anxiety and burnout.

Method

This study involved questionnaire development using existing instruments, namely DES, PSS, DASS-21, and MBI, and subsequent validation. Content validity was established with 7 experts, face validity with 50 students, and construct validity and reliability with 100 students. Data analysis employed I-CVI, S-CVI, I-FVI, S-FVI, and the Rasch model.

Result

The study included 50% students in the preclinical program and 50% students in the clinical program, and a mean age of 20.04 ± 1.79 years. Regarding context validity, only 3 out of 46 items scored below 1.00 but above 0.78. While the S-CVI scores showed that almost all domains had scores of 1.00, the face validity showed all items scored more than 0.80, and the S-CVI scores also more than 0.83. Person-map analysis demonstrated the questionnaire’s ability to capture distinct stress dimensions, with preclinical students showing higher scores on social support (SS) and clinical students on personal aspects (PP), suggesting differences in perceived support and self-doubt, respectively. A Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.94 across both preclinical and clinical programs shows that the questionnaire is reliable and that the interaction between respondents and items is of high quality.

Conclusion

The questionnaire exhibited strong evidence of content, face, and construct validity, as well as high reliability. This validated questionnaire offers a practical and comprehensive approach for measuring academic stress, with the potential to support proactive interventions and improve dental students’ well-being and educational outcomes.