Stress - Daily Hassles and Uplifts

Question 1

What are ‘daily hassles’? Can you identify some examples?

Answer 1

The stresses of everyday life as opposed to major life events. Daily hassles could include lots of things such as;

• sitting in traffic
• concerns about weight or health
• disagreements with friends or parents
• losing key
• computer issues
• losing internet connection!!

Question 2

What are ‘uplifts’? Any examples?

Answer 2

The little things and minor events that give you a positive feeling during the day. e.g.. people being nice to you, your pets, weather improvements, getting things done.

Question 3

What is the accumulation effect?

Answer 3

Where a number of daily hassles combine, build up or multiply leading to more severe stress reactions.

Question 4

What is the amplification effect?

Answer 4

When people are already experiencing chronic stress, hassles are perceived to be much larger than they really are.

Question 5

What is the HSUP?

Answer 5

Hassles and Uplifts Scale, a method of assessing the daily causes of, and releases from, stress.

Question 6

Delongis et al (1982) AIMS - they wanted to find out which were more strongly related to illness caused by stress, Daily Hassles or Major life events. What were the PROCEDURES?

Answer 6

• 100 participants (45-64 years old)
• used the Hassle Scale (117 items covering all areas of daily life)
• They also used a separate uplifts scale (135 items)
• They used a life events questionnaire to measure life events scores
• Finally they used a health questionnaire
• Hassles and health questionnaire every month for 9 months
• Life Events Rating after 10 months, looking back on the previous year

Question 7

Delongis et al (1982) - what were the FINDINGS?

Answer 7

• Delongis found that the correlation between daily hassles and illness was greater than the relationship between life events and illness
• Uplifts did not appear to help reduce the development of health problems

Question 8

Supporting evidence for Delongis et al — Bouteyre et al (2007) investigated the relationship between daily hassles and mental health of students during the transition from college to University. What did they find?

Answer 8

• 41% of the participants suffered from depressive symptoms

- there was a HIGH positive correlation between scores and the hassles scale and the incidence of depressive symptoms

Question 9

Can you identify some weaknesses of Delongis et al’s research? These could probably be applied to much of the research about hassles and uplifts

Answer 9

• Most assessment tools were self report where perception of events and hassles could be seen to be subjective
• The study uses retrospective data where participants have to recall past events which could lead to false information affecting the internal validity (i.e.. the research didn’t measure what it wanted to measure)