Validation of a one-item acute stress scale for driving tasks
DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1005230
archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified
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Summary
This study addresses the lack of a validated, subjective one-item scale for measuring acute stress in driving contexts, particularly for emergency personnel like ambulance crews and firefighters. While physiological measures and multi-item questionnaires exist, there is no equivalent to the widely used Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS) for assessing immediate driver stress. The authors developed the VTI Acute Stress Scale (VSS), a nine-point scale modeled after the KSS, to provide a quick, sensitive tool for field studies. The research aimed to validate whether the VSS could effectively discriminate between varying levels of perceived stress during simulated driving tasks. The experimental design involved 49 participants recruited from ambulance and emergency response services in western Sweden. Participants completed three counterbalanced driving scenarios in a passenger car simulator, designed to induce low, medium, and high stress levels. Task A was a non-urgent rural drive with a wildlife encounter; Task B was an urgent urban callout; and Task C was a life-threatening emergency response involving traffic congestion and a deteriorating patient. After each task, participants rated their perceived stress using the VSS, their workload using the NASA Task Load Index (NASA-TLX), and their sleepiness using the KSS. Statistical analyses included mixed-model ANOVA to compare scores across tasks and correlation analyses to assess relationships between the scales. The results demonstrated that the VSS successfully discriminated between the three driving tasks. Mean VSS ratings increased significantly from Task A (3.17) to Task B (3.77) to Task C (4.65), with post-hoc tests confirming significant differences between all pairs. The VSS scores showed moderate to strong positive correlations with all NASA-TLX subscales, including mental demand (r = 0.606) and temporal demand (r = 0.605), indicating that the stress scale is related to but distinct from workload. Correlations with the KSS were moderate (r = 0.304). Notably, stress ratings remained moderate throughout the trials, with no participant rating above 7 on the nine-point scale, suggesting that simulator scenarios did not replicate the extreme urgency of real-life emergencies. The study concludes that the VSS is a valid tool for measuring acute driver stress in moderately stressful conditions. Its primary advantage is its structural alignment with the KSS, allowing for the concurrent assessment of stress and sleepiness in traffic safety research. This is significant because both factors contribute to crash risk, yet stress has been less studied than fatigue. The authors note that while the simulator provided controlled conditions, future validation is required in real-world driving environments and during high-stress scenarios to ensure the scale’s applicability to actual emergency responses.
Key finding
The VTI Acute Stress Scale effectively discriminated between driving tasks with varying levels of perceived stress, validating its use for measuring acute driver stress in moderately stressful conditions.
Methodology
simulator
Sample size: 49
Provenance
The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed.
| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | Crossref | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-05 |
| archive | success | canonical_url | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-06 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 3 | 2026-06-10 |
| clean | success | clean | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-07 |
| chunk | success | chunk | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-07 |
| embed | success | embed | Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B | — | 1 | 2026-06-07 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-05 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 15 | 2026-06-11 |
| verify | partial | — | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified_with_issues.
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Information type
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- Empirical Findings: physiological data, self report data
- Methodological Resource: validation psychometrics