Introduction.

Stress is associated with poor academic performance and mental health problems among university students. There are few instruments adapted to this population that identify sources of academic stress.

Objective.

To evaluate the psychometric properties of the Academic Stress Questionnaire at University (CEAU) in Mexican students.

Subjects and methods.

232 first-year medical students answered the CEAU and the Kessler psychological distress scale (K-10). The CEAU contains 19 items on potentially stressful school situations, while the K-10 measures nonspecific global psychological distress with 10 items. The construct validity was evaluated by factorial composition and by convergence with the K-10. Reliability measures were obtained by internal consistency and temporal stability.

Results.

The items were grouped into the four components of their original version and explained 45% of the total variance, with low factor loadings in two items and one outside the initially proposed factor; eliminating this last item produced a better fit of the components and increased the explanation of the variance to 57%. The internal consistency was α = 0.88 for the total score, with values from α = 0.70 to 0.83 in its subscales and a temporal stability of r(202) = 0.76 (p = .0001). The correlation between CEAU and K-10 was r(232) = 0.64 (p = .0001).

Conclusions.

The CEAU meets the reliability and construct validity criteria, adjusts to the proposed factors and correlates with psychological distress in the expected sense.

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