Measuring Interpersonal Stress with the Bergen Social Relationships Scale Psychometric Properties in Studies in Norway, Romania, and Russia

This study assessed the equivalence of the Bergen Social Relationships Scale (BSRS) across three countries. The six-item BSRS was developed to measure interpersonal stress in close relationships and is grounded in Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory. In this context, interpersonal stress refers to perceived troubled relationships with significant others who cause stress even when they do not mean to (e. g., inept social support attempts, criticism, demands that are too high). Interpersonal stress is of considerable concern because community-based research indicates that levels of anxiety, depressive symptomatology, and loneliness are significantly associated with levels of interpersonal stress. Structural equation models were used to assess the equivalence of the BSRS linguistic versions used in community-based samples in Norway (n = 328), Romania (n = 581), and Russia (n = 665). Results indicate that the BSRS has satisfactory internal consistency and that the factor structure is invariant across all three linguistic adaptations. This study provides evidence that the BSRS is equivalent across countries and suitable for the assessment of interpersonal stress, both to compare population levels of interpersonal stress and to explore structural relationships with other constructs in analytical models of psychological debilitation. The BSRS is brief enough for use in survey research applications.