| Summary: | Teachers in Malaysia are suffering from stress, and they must receive effective stress management interventions. A stress index is a tool that can help identify stress among teachers and help interested parties understand this nuanced issue. However, the existing stress indexes for teachers have two significant issues: relevancy and incomprehensive view on examining teacher stress. Thus, this study aims to explore proposed items for a new stress index for Malaysian teachers, focusing on coping mechanisms. Following the fuzzy Delphi method, literature found that teachers cope with stress with (1) Appraisal coping, (2) Adaptive behavioural coping, (3) Social coping and (4) Maladaptive coping. Following the literature, interview sessions were conducted with 14 teachers to corroborate the past findings and to unearth any possible findings that were missing in past studies. The interview found that the past studies’ findings were corroborated in the interview, with most teachers favouring social support and meditation, a strategy under the appraisal coping with managing their stress. These findings supported the four proposed themes for the stress index, and the next step is to seek a panel of experts to rate the items of the proposed stress index to establish their validity and reliability. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024.
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