A construction and validation of a Freshman Stress Questionnaire: an exploratory study.

A stress questionnaire for freshmen was developed and administered to 1,102 French students at the beginning of the term (T1). A Principal Component Analysis of responses, followed by varimax and oblique rotations, yielded four factors accounting for 58% of the total variance. Factors were identified as academic stress, university's dysfunctions, feelings of loneliness, and problems with close relations.