A Revised Measure of Occupational Stress for Firefighters: Psychometric Properties and Relationship to Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Depression, and Substance Abuse

The Sources of Occupational Stress scale (SOOS; Beaton & Murphy, 1993 ) is a 57-item self-report measure designed to assess the different sources of occupational stress faced by firefighters. The objective of the present research was to develop and evaluate an abbreviated version of the SOOS in order to reduce respondent burden. The revised 14-item version of the SOOS was evaluated in 2 independent samples of firefighters ( N = 408) along with measures of job outcomes, posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, and substance abuse. The SOOS-14 exhibited good internal consistency, good factor structure, and good validity coefficients across samples. Although additional studies are needed to replicate and expand on these results, the findings from the present research indicate that the SOOS-14 is a practical, reliable, and valid measure of occupational stress for firefighters.