(1) Background: The COVID-19 outbreak has created pressure in people’s daily lives, further threatening public health. Thus, it is important to assess people’s perception of stress during COVID-19 for both research and practical purposes. The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) is one of the most widely used instruments to measure perceived stress; however, previous validation studies focused on specific populations, possibly limiting the generalization of results. (2) Methods: This study tested the psychometric properties of three versions of the Chinese Perceived Stress Scale (CPSS-14, CPSS-10, and CPSS-4) in the Chinese general population during the COVID-19 pandemic. A commercial online survey was employed to construct a nationally representative sample of 1133 adults in Mainland China (548 males and 585 females) during a one-week period. (3) Results: The two-factor (positivity and negativity) solution for the three versions of the CPSS showed a good fit with the data. The CPSS-14 and CPSS-10 had very good reliability and the CPSS-4 showed acceptable reliability. Scores on all three versions of the CPSS were significantly correlated in the expected direction with health-related variables (e.g., depression, anxiety, and perceived COVID-19 risk), supporting the concurrent validity of the CPSS. (4) Conclusions: All three versions of the CPSS appear to be appropriate for use in research with samples of adults in the Chinese general population under the COVID-19 crisis. The CPSS-10 and CPSS-14 both have strong psychometric properties, but the CPSS-10 would have more utility because it is shorter than the CPSS-14. However, the CPSS-4 is an acceptable alternative when administration time is limited.

Although client feedback has been demonstrated to improve psychotherapy outcomes in over a dozen randomized clinical trials, no studies to date have investigated the feedback effect outside of the United States or Europe. This study examined the impact of a client feedback intervention, the Partners for Change Outcome Management System, in a college counseling center in Wuhan, China ( = 186). Using a randomized design within routine care, treatment as usual (TAU; = 85) was compared with a feedback condition ( = 101) in which therapists had access to client-generated outcome and alliance information at each session. Clients in the feedback condition demonstrated significantly greater improvement than those in the TAU condition at posttreatment. Not-on-track ( = 60) clients also demonstrated significantly more improvement at 6 times the rate of reliable change compared with the TAU condition. Survival analysis revealed that 66.7% of the clients in the feedback condition achieved reliable and clinically significant change after a median of 4 sessions whereas 57.0% of the clients in the TAU condition achieved reliable and clinically significant change after a median of 6 sessions. Alliance scores improved significantly more across treatment and were higher at posttreatment in the feedback condition. Although preliminary, this study suggests that the positive effects of improved outcomes and increased efficiency associated with systematic client feedback can also occur in a college counseling setting in China. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

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Background Research on how employees recover from work has focused primarily on recovery during non-work hours (external recovery) rather than recovery during work hours (internal recovery). Using the conservation of resources theory as a conceptual framework, we tested whether job crafting promotes an internal recovery state, and examined the processes that explain this association. Methods Using the daily diary method, 120 full-time employees provided information before and after work for 5 days by rating job crafting, ego depletion, self-control demands at work, fatigue and vigor. Results The results of multilevel modeling showed that after controlling for employees’ fatigue and vigor before work, daily job crafting predicted significantly better internal recovery (greater vigor and lower fatigue at the end of workday), and this association was mediated by lower ego depletion. The links between job crafting and internal recovery were stronger for employees with high self-control demands at work. Conclusions This study extends recovery research by examining internal recovery as well as job crafting as its antecedent. Further, the present study suggests that managers may consider encouraging and offering job crafting interventions for employees to achieve internal recovery state.