Sources Of Stress: Life Changes Flashcards
What is used to measure life changes and who developed it?
Social readjustment rating scale
Holmes and Rahe (1967)
What did the scale consist of?
43 life events, and an individual identifies which items occurred within a specific time period (3 months, 6 months, 1 year)
Who is the key study about in life changes?
Rahe et al(1970)
What did Rahe et al conduct an experiment on?
Used a slightly developed SRRS to investigate the relationship between stress an illness.
What was the name of Rahe et al’s adapted SRRS?
Schedule of Recent Experiences (SRE)
What was the procedure of Rahe et al’s study?
The sample consisted of 2460 men who were in the navy/marines
Asked them to complete an SRE for events they had experienced in the past 2 years.
This then produced their LCU score. During the 6-8 month tour of duty, a record was kept of anytime one of them men visited the sick bay on board the ship as well as the type and severity of the illness, producing an illness score
What were the findings of Rahe et al’s study?
He found a significant positive correlation between the LCU score and the illness score. Those men who scored low in terms of their SRE also had low levels of illness
What was Rahe et al’s conclusion?
As both positives and negatives are included in the SRRS, it appears that it is change rather than negativity of change that is important in creating stress. It is the overall amount of psychic energy (mental and emotional effort) required to deal with a life event that creates the stress.
finish the evaluation: Rahe et al’s research is based on all male participants
This means that the research can not be generalised to the wider population, for example women. Thus the research is flawed due to the gender bias as the research is androcentric.
finish the evaluation: military men have a stressful job in comparison to other people
For example, they have the possibility of death and the stress of being away from home for extensive periods of time. Thus the research is flawed as it cannot be generalised to other people outside of the occupation of marines / navy.
finish the evaluation: the research can be supported by that of cohen et al
They conducted an experiment to measure the effect of stress on the body’s immune system. The level of stress in their lives was measured by; a life event scale, a scale assessing the individuals perceived level of stress and a scale that measured levels of anxiety, fear and depression. They concluded that those who had a high stress score were more likely to get a cold than those who had a low stress score, proving that stress increases vulnerability to infections and thus lowers the immune system as Rahe et al’s research suggests.
finish the evaluation: Rahe et al’s study is flawed as it is not an objective measure of assessment of a degree of adjustment
The participants filled out the SRE’s etc by themselves. This can lead to social desirability as participants may lie and report what they would deem as socially desirable. This Rahe et al’s research is flawed as it is subjective which means it is bias.
finish the evaluation: Rahe et al’s study is retrospective
The only way that you can study this is in retrospect. This means that the participants are only looking at life changes that have happened in the past. Thus, the participants will feel differently about the past changes than they would if they were actually going through the change.
