Life Changes Flashcards
Define ‘Life changes’
Life changes: events in life requiring a major transition in some aspect of life. Sometimes they are termed critical life changes as they have a massive impact, e.g. death of a spouse.
What scale is used to measure life changes?
Social Readjustment rating Scale
Who created the SRRS and when?
Social Readjustment Rating Scale – Holmes and Rahe (1967)
How did Holmes and Rahe (1967) create the SRRS?
•43 life events were taken from 5000 patient records
•400 Participants scored the life events in terms of the readjustment needed
•Scores for individual life events were totalled and averaged to produce a Life Change Unit (LCU) for each event.
Death was ranked top with LCU of 100 compared to minor violations of the law LCU of 11 which was ranked as 43rd on the list
• To measure an individual’s overall life change score, LCUs are added up for all critical life events experienced in the previous 12months
Who conducted the key study into life changes and when?
Rahe in 1970
The aim of Rahe et al’s 1970 key study into life changes was to see if the scores on the SRRS could predict the future of onset illness, how did he go about testing this aim?
Procedure
>2500 American male sailors were given SRRS to assess how many life events they had in the previous six months. >Their total score on the SRRS was recorded
>Over the following six months of their tour, detailed records were kept of each of each sailor’s health.
What correlation was found between life change scores and illness scores of Rahe et al’s 1970 study into Life changes?
+0.118
What conclusion could be drawn from Rahe et al’s 1970 study into life changes?
LCUs were positively correlated with illness scores; therefore experiencing life events increases the chance of stress related health breakdown
Who did the supporting research of Rahe et al’s 1970 study into life changes?
Stone et al 1987
Describe Stone et al’s study into Life changes (supportive of Rahe’s)
‘Undesirable events may be cushioned by frequency of desirable events’
Procedures - Asked married couples to make daily records of life events, including illness over a three month period.
Findings – showed that 3-4 days prior to illness desirable events decreased and undesirable events increased.
What are the 6 possible evaluation points for the Life changes approach and research?
Social Desirability Bias :( Individual differences :( Correlational not Causational :( Perception of life events :( An incomplete account :( Out of date and androcentric :(
Elaboratedevaluation points for the Life changes approach and research
Social Desirability Bias
Self-report techniques such as SRRS are open to bias – people may want to present themselves in a positive way rather than an accurate one. Validity and reliability of people’s memory of past events has been questioned
Individual differences
The reaction to a life change depends on individual differences. People react differently: what is stressful to one person might not be stressful for another
Correlational not Causational
Cannot predict causal (cause and effect) relationship, only correlational analysis
Perception of life events
Positive life events e.g. marriage. The SRRS does not distinguish between positive and negative life events – if it is a positive stress
An incomplete account
There are other sources of stress than life changes – therefore it could be an incomplete approach. Life events may not affect health because they are too rare. Daily hassles may be more important to health.
Out of date and androcentric
Holmes and Rahe’s work was conducted in the 1970s and has been criticized for being out of date and androcentric, e.g. ‘Wife begins or stops work.’
Some examples from the SRRS
Death of a spouse 100 Divorce 73 Marital Separation 65 Pregnancy 40 Death of a Friend 35 Begin or end school 26 Vacation 13 Christmas 12 Minor violations of the law 11
