A Systematic Review on Validity Evidence of Medical Student Stressor Questionnaire

Introduction: Detecting sources of stress of medical students is important for planning wellness program to improve their psychological wellbeing. One of instruments to detect the sources of stress is the Medical Student Stressor Questionnaire (MSSQ). A systematic review was performed to find out evidence to support its validity in term of content, response process, internal structure, relation to other variables, and consequences. Method: The author planned, conducted and reported this study according to PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses) standard of quality for reporting meta-analyses. Systematic search was performed on EBSCOhost, Scopus, Proquest, PubMed, Web of Science and Google Scholar databases. Result: The author yielded 613 relevant articles based on search terms, 44 articles had used MSSQ, and after critical appraisal, only 18 articles provided evidence to support validity MSSQ and thus were included in the systematic review. Conclusion: This systematic review supports the validity of MSSQ in relation to content, response process, internal structure, relations to other variables, and consequences of its scores. MSSQ is a valid tool to detect sources of stress in medical students and its results can be utilised as a guide to plan wellness program or intervention to improve medical students’ wellbeing.