A Japanese version of the Pearlin and Schooler’s Sense of Mastery Scale

The aims of this research were to develop a Japanese version of Pearlin and Schooler’s Sense of Mastery Scale (SOMS) and evaluate its reliability and validity. This survey targeted 4,000 men and women aged 25–74 living in Japan as of January 1, 2014, categorized them according to the region and size of the city in which they lived, randomly extracted 200 municipalities, and randomly extracted individuals after categorizing for sex and age based on the resident registries of each municipality. 2,067 survey responses were collected (response rate 51.7%). We used weighted 7-item (SOMS-7) and 5-item (SOMS-5) versions that excludes two reverse items (item6 and 7) from SOMS-7 of the SOMS. From the item analysis, the item-total correlation coefficients of the two reverse items (items 6 and 7) were .03 and .34. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was also .69 in SOM-7 and .77 in SOMS-5. The partial correlation coefficients between SOMS and the sense of coherence, mental health inventory, self-rated health, and life satisfaction were all significant (p < 0.001). The SOMS showed high construct validity. SOMS-5 has sufficient reliability.