Short version of the "instrument for assessment of stress in nursing students" in the Brazilian reality.

Goal: validate a short version of the Instrument for assessment of stress in nursing students in the Brazilian reality.

Method: Methodological study conducted with 1047 nursing students from five Brazilian institutions, who answered the 30 items initially distributed in eight domains. Data were analyzed in the R Statistical Package and in the latent variable analysis, using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, Cronbach's alpha and item-total correlation.

Results: The short version of the instrument had 19 items distributed into four domains: Environment, Professional Training, Theoretical Activities and Performance of Practical Activities. The confirmatory analysis showed absolute and parsimony fit to the proposed model with satisfactory residual levels. Alpha values ​​per factor ranged from 0.736 (Environment) to 0.842 (Performance of Practical Activities).

Conclusion: The short version of the instrument has construct validity and reliability for application to Brazilian nursing undergraduates at any stage of the course.