The development of a comparative appraisal of perceived resources and demands for principals

The purpose of this study was to develop the Comparative Appraisal of perceived Resources and Demands for Principals (CARD-P), which is used for appraising perceived stress in the elementary school principalship. An appraisal-based definition of stress was derived from literature and used as the theoretical framework for creating the instrument. The instrument was developed to capture the cognitive-transactional nature of stress as the differential between the subjective appraisal of demands and resources within the school/school district environment. The instrument was adapted from the Classroom Appraisal of Resources and Demands – School-aged Version developed by Lambert, McCarthy, & Abbott-Shim (2001). The CARD-P was developed in three stages. The first stage utilized a questionnaire given to a purposeful sample of six current principals stratified by grade level to determine characteristics (personal, school, and school system), demands, and resources perceived as most contributing to stress in the principalship. Due to the differences between perceptions of elementary and high school principals, the instrument was designed for elementary principals. The second stage aligned the characteristics, demands and resources with relevant literature to generate items and subscales for inclusion in a prototype. In the final stage, cognitive interviews with six elementary principals were used to improve the comprehension, structure, and clarity of the instrument. The CARD-P (Appendix G) is a 104-item instrument for measuring perceived stress in the elementary school principalship. The CARD-P employs four sub-scales: two scales with short anwers for general information about the principal (13 items) and the school/school district (16 items), a 36-item perceived demands subscale with a five-point Likert-like scale from 1 (not demanding) to 5 (extremely demanding), and a 34-item perceived resources and supports subscale with a five-point Likert-like scale from 1 (very unhelpful) to 5 (very helpful). Four open-ended questions are also included in the measure. Through these sub-scales, the CARD-P attempts to measure principal stress as the difference between the perceived demands and the perceived resources subscales. While the data from this study supports the potential of the instrument for use by elementary principals, future research is needed to assess the technical quality of the instrument. Future research may also include the expansion of the CARD-P for middle and high school principals