Measuring Stress: Self Report Scales And Physiological Measures Flashcards
What is a positive evaluation point for the SRRS?
The SRRS is a way to measure the life events experienced in a quantitative way, meaning scores can be reliably compared from person to person.
What is a negative evaluation for SRRS?
The resulting data can only give a correlation between life events and likelihood of illness, but that cause and effect be unclear. For example, unemployment could be the result of a long standing illness causing a person to miss a lot of work for a long time.
What is a positive evaluation point for the daily hassles and uplifts scale?
By quantifying the daily hassles and uplifts experienced by a person, researchers are able to more easily analyse the results in relation to how likely it is that the person will suffer from stress related illness.
What is a negative evaluation point of daily hassles and uplifts scale?
The judgment made by each participant on a particular day could be affected by how they feel on that particular day in general. A person may perceive more hassles and fewer uplifts if they are in a bad mood one day, for example.
What are the two self report scales in stress?
SRRS
daily hassles and uplifts scale
What are the physiological measures of stress?
Skin conductance response (SCR)
The polygraph test
Measuring heart rate/ blood pressure
Blood or urine samples
How does the skin conductance response measure stress?
SCR is the skins resistance to electric impulses. When we are under stress the skin swears more, meaning that is can conduct electricity more easily. Conversely, when we are not stressed, the lack of sweat means that the skin does not conducts electricity as easily.
How does the polygraph measure stress?
Polygraph tests take a number of measures from an individual including heart rate, blood pressure, breathing rate and SCR. A baseline measure is taken of the individual to see what their ‘normal levels’ of each of these are. The same participant will then be asked questions and measures will be taken while they respond to see if they show any signs of stress. Signs of stress will be taken as a sign of lying.
What are other types of measure of stress other than SCR and polygraph test?
Measures could be taken of heart rate and blood pressure to look for increases that might indicate stress.
Blood or urine samples could also be taken to look for high levels of the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol, which could indicate that the body is under stress.
What research did Storm carry out in 2000?
Wanted to see if SCR can be used to measure responses to stressful stimuli in preterm infants.
A group of 20 preterm infants had their SCR measured for 3 minutes before, during and after being given a heel prick.
Measurements of skin conductivity increased during the heel prick and then returned to normal/baseline level.
What was Storms conclusion?
Stress responses in preterm infants can be measured using SCR, which could be useful for neonatal care in alerting staff to pain or stress in the babies.
What are the positive evaluations for physiological measures of stress?
A useful application of physiological measures like SCR is in measuring stress responses in people who may not be able to report them, such as in the case of Storm’s research on preterm infants.
Using physiological measures of stress is more objective than using self report measures to gather data on stress levels.
What are the negative evaluation points for physiological measures of stress?
SCR measurements can be affected by external stimuli such as temperature, so the measures taken may be unreliable and inconsistent.
A person’s SCR measurements can be different for different stimuli and on different occasions with the same stimuli, so they are not necessarily a useful way to measure stress levels.
