Many research studies show that the psychosocial pressure environment seriously affects the mental health, academic performance, and future career development of university students (Adams, 2004; Bernhardt et al., 2012; Singh et al., 2012; Fanning, 2016). Psychosocial pressure environments refer to social environments that cause individuals to experience psychological pressure, mainly regarding the social environment as the source of psychological pressure (Jiang and Peng, 2006). Existing research shows that current university students need to spend a lot of time, energy, and emotion due to increasingly challenging courses and demanding tasks. They also experience a lack of respect from society and face a serious employment situation, which creates a poor psychosocial environment and increases the psychosocial pressures facing them (Akinola and Oladunmoye, 2018; Collin et al., 2020). Research also shows that a negative psychosocial stress environment has a significant predictive effect on negative emotions, fatigue, physical pain, low self-evaluation, and suicidal tendencies of university students (Låftman et al., 2015).

At present, the diagnosis of psychosocial stress depends on behavioral evaluation, due to the lack of biomarkers to objectively identify psychosocial stress among university students. However, there are few measurement tools available to explore the source of university students’ group psychological pressure, which limits the development of research to a certain extent. Therefore, in a complex psychological and social environment, it is important to identify the components that cause university students’ psychological and social pressure. In the study of occupational health, several theoretical models of stressful psychosocial work environments have been developed and applied. These include the work-family balance model, work environment matching model, effort-reward imbalance model and work demand-control model (Siegrist, 1996; Siegrist et al., 2004; Elovainio et al., 2010; Chungkham et al., 2013). One of the most widely tested models, the ‘effort-reward imbalance model’ (ERI), posits that the imbalance between high effort and low reward is the cause of work stress, which will be more obvious when individuals are overcommitted (Siegrist, 1996; Siegrist et al., 2004). Many studies have shown that an effort-reward imbalance leads to various physical discomforts and psychological diseases (Hinz et al., 2016; Siegrist, 2016). At present, researchers have retained the basic principle of the effort-reward imbalance model and migrated the model to university settings. And revised the effort-reward imbalance scale for university students, namely the effort-reward Imbalance for University Students (ERIUS; Wege et al., 2017). The scale has been revised and verified in other countries, with high reliability and validity, and is a useful measure of the source of psychological and social stress in university students (Williams et al., 2018; Portoghese et al., 2019; Porru et al., 2021). Studies have also shown that the effort-reward imbalance of university students can significantly predict their burnout, fatigue, low self-evaluation, and suicidal tendencies (Wahrendorf et al., 2012; Shang et al., 2014; Wege et al., 2017; Hwang et al., 2019).

Since there is no Chinese version of the scale, this study attempted to revise the ERIUS in Chinese and assess its reliability and validity. The scale was revised in a sample of university students under the Chinese cultural context, and we used exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis to evaluate its psychometric characteristics, to provide a reliable measurement tool for Chinese related research and promote the development of research in this field in China. Some studies also show that there is a significant positive correlation between effort-reward imbalance and stress performance among university students. The degree of effort-reward imbalance in university students has been shown to positively predict their stress performance (Williams et al., 2018; Portoghese et al., 2019; Porru et al., 2021). Therefore, this study took stress as the criterion validity to explore the relationship between effort-reward imbalance and stress in university students.

We used Harman’s single-factor test to control common method bias. This resulted in nine components explaining 83.75% of the variance, with the first one explaining only 30.65%. Therefore, there is no common method bias in this study.

The main purpose of this study was to assess the psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the ERIUS in the Chinese cultural context. This study revised the Chinese version of ERIUS through translation, exploratory factor analysis, reliability and validity testing and confirmatory factor analysis. Results of exploratory factor analysis and item analysis indicated that the commonality of the 14 items was statistically significant. Therefore, all items and factor structure included in the revised Chinese version of the scale are consistent with the original scale. The internal consistency coefficients of the overall scale and the three factors were all above 0.87, indicating adequate reliability.

Factor analysis is a recognized method to assess the potential structure of a questionnaire, and was used to investigate the factor structure of the Chinese version of the ERIUS in this study. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted and the shapes of the gravel map and the factor load map showed that all three factors of the original scale could be retained in the revised version. The 14 items of the ERIUS have statistically significant commonality, so the scale’s original 14 items can also be retained. The results of confirmatory factor analysis showed that ERIUS’ three factors had a good fit, and all statistical indicators were within an acceptable range. The adaptability, reliability and validity of the model were also within an acceptable range. In addition, the internal consistency coefficient of the three subscales were 0.87, 0.89, and 0.91, respectively, indicating adequate reliability. Our results also showed that the effort-reward ratio of the ERIUS and the Stress Scale for university students were significantly positively correlated (Williams et al., 2018; Portoghese et al., 2019; Porru et al., 2021). Some previous results have shown that the higher the ratio of effort-reward imbalance, the greater the psychological pressure of university students (Porru et al., 2021). We also found that the overcommitment subscale of ERIUS and the stress scale were significantly positively correlated, which was consistent with previous findings (Portoghese et al., 2019). Overall, our findings show that the Chinese version of the Effort-Reward Imbalance for University Students Scale has high criterion validity and the scale has adequate stability over time.

One limitation should be mentioned. The results are limited to a sample of university students from Guangxi, China, and it is not known whether they can be generalized to students in other provinces. Moreover, we were not in a position to analyze potential selection bias within the confines of this study.

we were able to demonstrate satisfactory psychometric properties of a short, theory based self-report assessment of stressful working environments of university students. To sum up, this study demonstrated that the Chinese version of the Effort-Reward Imbalance for University Students Scale has adequate psychometric properties, which can be used as a tool to evaluate university students’ effort-reward imbalance.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

CK is responsible for project implementation, experiment design, and thesis writing. LB is responsible for data analysis and statistical results. SS is responsible for project supervision and thesis revision. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

This research was supported by the Guangxi Science and Technology Normal University Youth Scientific Research Innovation Team Project [Title: Teachers’ Professional Mental Health Research Team (GXKS2020QNTD05)].

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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