Stress

The 10-item Perceived Stress Scale (PSS; Cohen et al., 1983) was used to measure the extent to which participants perceive their lives as stressful, uncontrollable, and overloaded (e.g., “Difficulties are piling up so high that I could not overcome them,” and reversed item e.g., “Things are going my way”). Participants rated the items on a 5-point Likert scale from 1 (“Never”) to 5 (“Always”). After reversing positively worded items, a higher score indicates a greater level of stress. Internal consistency of the scale in this study was α = 0.89 at T1, 0.88 at T2, and 0.90 at T3.