Health Psychology Open July-December 2015: 1–9 © The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: sagepub. com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/2055102915596714 hpo.sagepub.com Creative Commons Non Commercial CC-BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). Introduction Stress among undergraduate and graduate students is multi- factorial, arising from both academic and non-academic factors, including socio-cultural, environmental, and psy- chological attributes (Brand and Schoonheim-Klein, 2009). Stress levels may escalate to significant proportions in some students, to present with symptoms of anxiety espe- cially during tests and examination periods. In fact, previ- ous research suggested a modest prevalence rate of 10 to 35 percent of college students experience functionally impairing levels of test anxiety (Chapell et al., 2005; Naveh-Benjamin et al., 1997). However, not all students experience anxiety with the same severity. In the Social Survey of the German Student Union, it was estimated that approximately 15–20 percent of student’s functioning become impaired by exam nerves in a “modest” to “high” degree (Neuderth et al., 2009). Also, it was demonstrated that the delay and the drop-out in university students occur significantly more often in students with test anxiety and is associated with psychiatric morbidity including suicidal behavior and high economic costs (Schaefer et al., 2007). Also, it was demonstrated that 10 percent of dental students suffered from severe emotional exhaustion, 17 percent complained about a severe lack of accomplishment, and 28 percent reported severe depersonalization symptoms (Pohlmann et al., 2005). Academic factors were the pre- dominant cause of stress in most students, followed by physical, social, and emotional. Majority of students with stress reported high scores of poor self-esteem, and about half scored high on depression scales (Baste and Gadkari, 2014). Results from the literature suggest that higher level of stress to be associated with poor academic performance (Sohail, 2013). Examining perceptions of academic stress and its sources among university students: The Perception of Academic Stress Scale Dalia Bedewy 1 and Adel Gabriel 2 Abstract The development of a scale to measure perceived sources of academic stress among university students. Based on empirical evidence and recent literature review, we developed an 18-item scale to measure perceptions of academic stress and its sources. Experts (n = 12) participated in the content validation process of the instrument before it was administered to (n = 100) students. The developed instrument has internal consistency reliability of 0.7 (Cronbach’s alpha), there was evidence for content validity, and factor analysis resulted in four correlated and theoretically meaningful factors. We developed and tested a scale to measure academic stress and its sources. This scale takes 5 minutes to complete. Keywords academic stress, measurement scales, university students 1 Tanta University, Egypt 2 University of Calgary, Canada Corresponding author: Adel Gabriel, Departments of Psychiatry & Community Health Sciences, University of Calgary, 2000 Pegasus Road NE, Calgary AB T2E 8K7, Canada. Email: gabriel@ucalgary.ca 596714HPO 0 0 10.1177/2055102915596714Health Psychology OpenBedewy and Gabriel research-article 2015 Report of empirical study