ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1556824
This article is part of the Research TopicProtective vs Risk Factors for Stress and Psychological Well-being in Academic University ContextsView all 7 articles
Sources of Stress in Online Learning Scale (SSOLS): Development and validation of an instrument to evaluate students' stressors associated with the online learning
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Psychology and Education Sciences, Transilvania University of Brașov, Brasov, Romania
- 2'Constantin Rădulescu-Motru' Institute of Philosophy and Psychology, Romanian Academy, Bucharest, Romania
- 3Department of Education Sciences, The National University of Science and Technology POLITEHNICA Bucharest, Pitești University Centre Romania, Bucharest, Romania
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Since transitioning to online teaching and learning was forced to happen in the shortest ever time span during the COVID-19 pandemic, the opportunity arose for educational researchers to reflect on tools and means for measuring and explaining students' and teachers' relevant experiences related to the change. One of our responses to this challenge was to elaborate, administer and evaluate the psychometric properties of an instrument -Sources of Stress in Online Learning Scale (SSOLS) -that would help educational professionals assess students 'perceptions upon sources of stress regarding their online learning. Furthermore, SSOLS's factors would allow educators to predict students' learning engagement due to the valid predictive association. The present research aimed to develop and test an instrument assessing the sources of stress in the context of academic online learning and to articulate its psychometric properties. The study focused on the responses of more than 500 university students regarding perceived stressors pertaining to the experience of online learning. Our analysis demonstrated that the instrument (SSOLS) is reliable and valid in measuring the sources of stress associated with online learning. Also, the dimensions of SSOLS were shown to be valid predictors for academic engagement.
Keywords: sources of stress scale, Online Learning, Academic stress, stressors, Learning engagement
Received: 07 Jan 2025; Accepted: 30 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Topală, Necsoi, Cazan and Stan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Daniela-Veronica Necsoi, Department of Psychology and Education Sciences, Transilvania University of Brașov, Brasov, Romania
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.