Life Changes as a Source of Stress Flashcards
What are life changes?
Occasional events resulting in adjustments to lifestyle
What did Holmes and Rahe create?
Social Rating Readjustment Scale (SRRS)
What did Holmes and Rahe do?
Noticed that several patients had experienced major life changes in the months leading up to their illness, interviews 5000 patients and made a list of 43 life changes
How many people completed Holmes and Rahe’s scale?
400, who rated the life events for how stressful they were
What did Holmes and Rahe find?
People with higher Life Changibg Unit (LCU) scores for the preceding year were more likely to experiment physical illness the following year
What did Holmes and Rahe conclude?
- Stress could be measured objectivity as an LCU score
- Stress can lead to illness
- LCU scores can predict the chances of becoming ill
What did Rahe do?
2500 male American sailors were give SRRS to access how many life events they experienced in the last 6 months. Over the following 6 month tour of duty detailed record we’re kept of each sailors health status. The number of LCU were correlated with the sailors illness scores
What were the findings of Rahe’s study?
There was a positive correlation between Life Change scores and illness scores, meaningful relationship between LCY and health
What are 3 evaluation points?
- Lacks temporal validity
- Self report method
- Postive and negative events have the same level of stress
