Table 1 Comparison of the perceived... | Emerald Publishing

Table 1

Comparison of the perceived stress scale, burnout assessment tool, and digital stress scale

Instrument	Focus	Dimensions measured	Relevance, limitations
Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) (Cohen et al., 1983)	Perceived stress in everyday life	Unpredictability, lack of control, perceived overload	Captures general stress perception but does not specifically address digital work conditions, institutional support, or social interaction in digital environments
Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT) (Schaufeli et al., 2020)	Burnout symptoms	Exhaustion, mental distance, emotional impairment, cognitive impairment	Measures burnout outcomes but does not explicitly measure digital workload conditions, social support, or institutional factors related to digital transformation
Digital Stress Scale (DSS) (Argyriadi et al., 2025)	Digital stress in professional contexts	Digital fatigue, technostress, digital disengagement, work-life digital boundaries	Addresses digital stressors such as technostress and digital fatigue but focuses primarily on digital stress and does not capture broader social and organizational dimensions of employee well-being (e.g. collegial interaction and institutional support)

Instrument	Focus	Dimensions measured	Relevance, limitations
Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) (Cohen et al., 1983)	Perceived stress in everyday life	Unpredictability, lack of control, perceived overload	Captures general stress perception but does not specifically address digital work conditions, institutional support, or social interaction in digital environments
Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT) (Schaufeli et al., 2020)	Burnout symptoms	Exhaustion, mental distance, emotional impairment, cognitive impairment	Measures burnout outcomes but does not explicitly measure digital workload conditions, social support, or institutional factors related to digital transformation
Digital Stress Scale (DSS) (Argyriadi et al., 2025)	Digital stress in professional contexts	Digital fatigue, technostress, digital disengagement, work-life digital boundaries	Addresses digital stressors such as technostress and digital fatigue but focuses primarily on digital stress and does not capture broader social and organizational dimensions of employee well-being (e.g. collegial interaction and institutional support)

Source(s): Authors’ own work