Survey research and design in psychology/Assessment/Survey/TSQFUS1

Time and Stress Questionnaire for University Students v.1

Description

The TSQFUS1 is a 58-item self-report questionnaire designed to explore and measure university students' stress, time perspective, and time management skills.

Background info about university students is adapted from TUSSTMQ9/TUSSTMQ10.
Stress is measured by adapting the 10-item Perceived Stress Scale (Cohen, Kamarck, & Mermelstein, 1983) to a university time frame.
Time Perspective is measured using the 18-item short version of Zimbardo's Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI-Short) as recommended by Košťál, Klicperová-Baker, Lukavská, and Lukavský (2015).
Time Management Skills are measured using the 18-items from TUSSTMQ9/TUSSTMQ10.

This survey is primarily being used as part of Survey research and design in psychology, a 3rd year psychology class exercise at the University of Canberra, but is also freely available for use and development by others.

Timeline of development

TSQFUS1 (The University Student's Motivation & Satisfaction Questionnaire v.1) was developed and used in 2017.

Sections

Each of the sections in the survey and the 58 items within are described below.

Background information

There are 12 background information items:

Gender
Age
Student type (School-leave, Mature-age)
International student status
Enrolment type (Part-time, Full-time)
Preferred delivery mode (On-campus/face-to-face, Online, Flexible (i.e., combination of face-to-face & online), Intensive, Self-paced)
Faculty
% of degree complete
Time allocations: Hours per week doing:
1. Work
2. Classes
3. Study
4. Recreation, sport, and leisure
5. Socialising with family and friends
6. Sleeping
Survey research student (No, Yes)
Helpful time management strategies (2)
Poor time management strategies (2)

Perceived Stress Scale

There are 10 Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) items which are measured on a 5-point verbal frequency scale (0 = Never, 1 = Almost never, 2 = Sometimes, 3 = Fairly often, 4 = Very often). The time frame in the instructions was adjusted from "during the last month" to "since starting your current university course".

The items are from Cohen, S., Kamarck, T., Mermelstein, R. (1983). A global measure of perceived stress. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 24, 385-396.

Items 4, 5, 7, and 8 are scored in the opposite direction to Items 1, 2, 3, 5, 9, and 10, so make sure to apply reverse-scoring so that the variables are all measured in the same direction - and make sure that you understand what low or high scores indicate about stress.

What causes individual differences in stress and university student stress? What is the role of Time Perspective and Time Management Skills?

For more information, see PSS, stress, and university student stress.

Time Perspective

There are 18 items to measure 6 dimensions of time perspective. The items are from the short version of the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI-Short). The items are measured on a 5-point Likert scale (Very untrue, Untrue, Neutral, True, Very true). The 18-items are based on psychometrics work by Košťál, Klicperová-Baker, Lukavská, and Lukavský (2015).

Košťál, J., Klicperová-Baker, M., Lukavská, K., & Lukavský, J. (2015). Short version of the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI–short) with and without the Future-Negative scale, verified on nationally representative samples. Time & Society, 25, 169 - 192. doi: 10.1177/0961463X15577254

For more information, see Time perspective.

Time Management Skills

There are 18 time management skills items which are measured on an 8-point Likert scale (from False - Not Like Me to True - Like Me). These items are derived from the TUSSTMQ9 (introduced in v.4).

Figure 2. Some possible time management factors

The history of development of the time management items within the context of the TUSSTMQ is briefly described here. The theory and design principles were based on the Life Effectiveness Questionnaire which has a single factor for Time Management which was consistently the lowest self-rated area of personal effectiveness (Neill, 2007). It also seemed, at least theoretically, that time management skills might be multi-factorial. Hence, in conjunction with review of other time management questionnaires, an expanded item pool was developed.

The factor structure of the initial set of 30 items was somewhat unclear in TUSSTMQ4 (2009) and so it was retested in TUSSTMQ5(2010), with the addition of one new item. Exploratory factor analysis of TUSSTMQ5 data suggested a potential three-factor structure consisting of Time Management Effectiveness, Time Management Action, and Procrastination.

Some items were eliminated and some items were reworded for the 27-item TUSSTMQ6 (2011-2013; in particular, university-specific time management items were reworded or removed so that this became a general measure of time management behaviours) and a new item was added for v.7. The 28-item TUSSTMQ7 (2014) data suggested a possible four-factor structure: Time Management Effectiveness, Procrastination, Planning, Meeting Deadlines. For the 28-item TUSSTMQ8 (2015), to help emphasise this possible four-factor structure, an additional Planning item was added and a low loading item was removed from Time Management Effectiveness. For the 28-item TUSSTMQ9, there were minor wording changes for 4 items and two items were replaced/rewritten. For v.10 (used in TSQFUS1), the set of measurement items was reduced by 10 (from 28 to 18 items) whilst still seeking to measure the four target factors: Scheduling (includes planning and organising), Effectiveness (getting things done), Meeting deadlines, Procrastination (time wasting)). In total, 12 items were removed, 2 were added (to Scheduling), and 1 was reworded to simplify the expression.

For more information, see time management dimensionality.

References