Life events - life changes

Question 1

Why are major life events significant ?

Answer 1

As the events can change the way we live our daily lives.
- event disrupt normal routine
- if normal routine disrupted we have to think about how to do things - have to use much more mental energy - Holmes and Rahe call this psychic energy

Question 2

To measure the effect of life changes what did Holmes and Rahe (1967) develop ?

Answer 2

Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS).

Question 3

Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS)

Answer 3

43 life events were taken from 5000 patient records, 400 participants scored the life events in terms of the readjustment needed, i.e., marriage = 50. Scores for individual life events were added and averaged to produce a life change unit (LCU) for each event.

Question 4

Rahe et al (1967) AIM

Answer 4

to find out if life changes correlated with illness.

Question 5

Rahe et al (1967) - Procedure

Answer 5

• ‘normal’ population — not those who were already suffering of any known disorders.
• sample 2700 members of US navy. All life events of previous 6 months recorded — before a tour of duty using a questionnaire and a LCU score was calculated for each participant.
• During the tour of duty, every illness no matter how minor had to be reported.
• participants unaware of the aim of the study.
• On their return, after 6 months of active duty, an illness
  score was calculated and correlated with the LCU score by an independent researcher.

Question 6

Rahe et al (1967) result

Answer 6

a positive correlation ( .118) between the two sets of data supported the hypothesis that life changes cause stress and increase the likelihood of illness.

However, different cultural groups react differently to different life events. For example, one study compared American and Malaysian participants. The Malaysians’ attitudes toward breaking the law and toward relationships were different overall from those of the Americans studied, meaning that
their experience of stress was different, even though they had the same score.

Question 7

Rahe et al (1967) evaluation

Answer 7

• sample all male - androcentric - cannot generalise to women who respond diff to stress
• sample ethnocentric- drawn from individualist culture - cannot generalise to individual from collectivist cultures who might respond differently in a similar situation.
• data about life event obtained by questionnaires - prone to social desriability
• individ diff - not all of events on SRRS may affect heath eg divorce may be traumatic for some but relief to others esp if domestic abuse involved