Stress - Life Changes

Question 1

Define ‘Life Changes’

Answer 1

Major events that alter someone’s life to the point where they have to change or readjust.

Question 2

What is the SRRS and who developed it?

Answer 2

Social Readjustment Ratings Scale - it measures life changes and how much an individual has had to socially readjust to cope with the life change.

Developed by Holmes and Rahe (1967)

Question 3

What are the basic premises of the impact of life changes on stress levels and health?

Answer 3

• Changes in life situations has impact
• Change involves stress - even positive changes can cause stress
• Stress negatively affects health

Question 4

How was the SRRS constructed?

Answer 4

• based on 43 life events taken from the analysis of 5000 patient records of those suffering from stress
• 400 volunteers then ‘scored’ the events in terms of the impact that each had on 100 point scale - they used Marriage as a baseline 50pts
• If the event was seen to take more time to adjust to the score was given more than 50pts
• The scores were then totalled and averaged to produce the ‘Life Changing Units’ for each event.

Question 5

What are LCU?

Answer 5

Life Changing Units - the measure of impact int he Social Readjustments Ratings Scale

Question 6

Key Study - Rahe et al (1970) Navy staff - what were the aims?

Answer 6

To try to establish whether or not stress has an impact on illness

Question 7

Key Study - Rahe et al (1970) Navy staff - what were the procedures?

Answer 7

• approx 2500 Us Navy staff - all men with average age of 22.3 years
• used SRE (schedule of recent experiences) - a military version of the SRSS
• Assessed life events every 6 months for 2 years leading up to a deployment on one of 3 ships - this gave an LCU score
• This gave controlled conditions (same food, weather, absence from family etc) which reduced the number of variables that could impact upon stress levels
• The number of illnesses (Illness score) were also recorded over their time on the ships
• It was a double blind study. Neither naval staff or medical staff knew what the study was for, eliminating possibility of demand characteristics

Question 8

Key Study - Rahe et al (1970) Navy staff - what were the findings?

Answer 8

• They used the LCU scores to place people into bands 1-10 in terms of ‘stress levels’
• band 1 (low stress/LCU) had a mean illness rating of 1.434
• band 10 (highest stress/LCU) had a mean illness rating of 2.049 - almost double
• the correlation between LCU and illness scores was positive (0.118)

Question 9

Key Study - Rahe et al (1970) Navy staff - what were the conclusions?

Answer 9

• The significant difference was seen in the last 6 months leading upto the deployment (suggesting that as deployment got closer stress levels increased which impacted upon health)
• the relationship between illness and LCU scores before departure were not easy to establish as ‘on board’ events that caused stress could influence illness.
• the link between LCU score and illness was stronger in older men and married men (possibly due to family ties)

Question 10

Key Study - Rahe et al (1970) Navy staff - STRENGTHS

Answer 10

• controlled environment, reducing the number of extraneous variables
• large sample size
• low population validity (hard to generalise to whole population as these were predominantly fit and healthy men in the navy)
• androcentric (men only)
• double blindness of study reduced demand characteristics

Question 11

Key Study - Rahe et al (1970) Navy staff - WEAKNESSES

Answer 11

• some studies have shown that daily hassles and uplifts have more impact than life events (Delongis et al, 1982)
• younger men were unlikely to have experienced a number of life events
• study was correlational which can only ‘suggest’ a link rather than prove it. There could be other factors that influence stress levels such as the events during the missions