Biological - Life Changes & Daily Hassles

These can include minor irritants such as being late or having a bad hair day, OR more serious issues like buying a house, getting married or having children.

Social Readjustment Rating Scale - Holmes and Rahe (1967)

Aim: To construct an instrument for measuring stress.

Method:

- Examined medical records of 5000 patients.
- Compiled a list of 43 life events.
- Told 100 people that marriage had the arbitrary value of 500 and they had to assign a number to the other life events.
- Death of a spouse was judged to require twice as much readjustment as marriage.
- The amount of stress a person has experienced in a given period is measured by the total amount of life change units.

Findings:

- Most life events were less stressful than marriage, but six (death of spouse, divorce, personal injury, illness) were rated more stressful.
- People with a high LCU score were more likely to experience physical illness the following year.
- Someone scoring over 300 LCU had an 80% chance of becoming ill.

Conclusions:

- Stress could be measured objectively as an LCU score.

Evaluation:

- Life changes have a largely negative feel about them so the SRRS may be confusing 'change' with 'negativity'.
- Some life events are ambiguous.
- It may not be change that's stressful, but the unexpected change.
- Gender bias
- Vague - measurement is not valid.
- Ignores individual differences.
- Not applicable to all population.
- Not relevant to modern day.
- Ethical issues.

--------------------------------

Rahe, Mahan and Arthur (1970)

Procedure:

- Crew of three naval ships - 2684 men - assessed for LCU in preceding two years .

- Spent 6-8 months onboard ship and naval medicine staff kept record of their illnesses. 

Findings:

- Positive correlation found between life events in 6 months prior to departure and subsequent illness. 

- Few pre-departure life events = onboard illness low. 

- Results plotted against illness score. 

- Various factors affected pattern, such as the overall stress level of the crew and their age and marital status. 

Evaluation:

+ Natural experiment - reflects natural behaviour. 

+ Longitudinal - over a long period of time. 

- Androcentric.

- Longitudinal - attrition. 

- Self-reprot technique - social desirability bias. 

- Investigator bias - Rahe doing experiment - validity reduced. 

- Can't be replicated - low reliability. 

- Individual differences. 

- Doesn't prove cause and effect.