Life Events And Daily Hassles Flashcards
What are sources of stress
Life changes
Daily hassles
Work place stress
What are life changes/ events and what are LCU (life change units)
Large-scale changes to a person’s life, require adjustment which may causes stress. They can be positive or negative.
Eg getting married, losing job, death of spouse etc
LCU- is a score given to life events regarding how much change/ stress they cause. Eg death of a spouse is 100 LCU, pregnancy is 40 LCU
Outline and explain Holmes and Rahes study
Aimed to investigate the effects of life changes on health.
they noticed that many patients with heart disease reported significant life events in the year leading up to heart disease.
They looked at the records of 5000 patients then generated a list of 43 events and asked 400 people to rate them, based on how much psychological adjustment it would require.
This gave each event a LCU
They them developed a self report questionnaire SRRS > explanation of questionnaire next
What was Rahes and Holms SRRS questionnaire
It was a list of the 43 life events individual ticks it if they have experienced it in the past year, them life event scores are added up.
The higher the score the more individual is vulnerable to getting a stress related illness.
A score of over 300 is a major crisis and increases the risk to 80%
Evaluation of life changes/ events
❌life changes are experiences differently for everybody eg divorce can be good for some and bad for others.
❌does account for individual differences eg gender, personality- some people can mediate their stress better than others.
❌self-report questionnaire requires retrospective recall which may lack validity as some people may forget details about how they felt.
❌-The relationship between LCU score and stress-related illness is correlational so cannot say life changes cause illness
What are daily hassles
-minor events that people encounter all the time. Eg losing your keys, waking up late for work
-it’s the build-up of these daily hassles that can cause stress.
-we also gave up-lifts - little events that cheer us up.
Study of daily hassles- Kanner
Aim- to see if daily hassles were a good predictor of health problems associated with stress.
A questionnaire (daily hassles and uplifts scale- HSUP) was given to 100 pp to measure the number of daily hassles and uplifts they had experienced in the past month. This was done once a month for 10 months.
Relsyts- daily hassles were correlated with symptoms of psychologically ill health eg depression and anxiety.
Shows- daily hassles may be a better predictor of stress related illness than life events.
Outlune and evAluate the daily hassles and uplift scale questionnaire
HSUP scale
A list of over 100 negative things and over 100 positive things and pp were asked to rate them in terms of how much of a hassle or uplift they felt.
The more hassles reported the more at risk a person is for stress-related illness.
However, uplifts can counteract hassles.
❌ The judgement made by pp would be affected by how they feel on that day. Eg if they were in a bad mood that day due to an extraneous variable they’re more likely to perceive more hassles.
❌self report so pp could give socially desirable answers
❌restrosoective data
❌long questionnaire so people could loose comcernatrion
✅- easily analyse how likely someone is to getting a stress related illness and help 5em prevent it
Sources of stress-
What causes work place stress
Workload and control
