The Assessment and Measurement of Adult Life Stress: Basic Premises, Operational Principles, and Design Requirements

被引:187
作者
Harkness, Kate L. [1 ]
Monroe, Scott M. [2 ]
机构
[1] Queens Univ, Dept Psychol, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada
[2] Univ Notre Dame, Dept Psychol, Notre Dame, IN 46556 USA
关键词
chronic stress; daily hassles; measurement; stressful life events; SEROTONIN TRANSPORTER GENE; MAJOR DEPRESSIVE DISORDER; MEDIAL PREFRONTAL CORTEX; PSYCHOLOGICAL STRESS; CHRONIC DIFFICULTIES; CORTISOL RESPONSES; SOCIAL-FACTORS; RISK-FACTORS; SELF-REPORT; EVENTS;
D O I
10.1037/abn0000178
中图分类号
B849 [应用心理学];
学科分类号
040203 ;
摘要
Life stress is a central factor in the onset and course of a wide range of medical and psychiatric conditions. Determining the precise etiological and pathological consequences of stress, though, has been hindered by weaknesses in prevailing definitional and measurement practices. The purpose of the current paper is to evaluate the primary strategies for defining and measuring major and minor acute life events, chronic stressors, and daily hassles as informed by 3 basic scientific premises. The first premise concerns the manner in which stress is conceptualized and operationally defined, and specifically we assert that stress measures must not conflate the stress exposure with the stress response. The second premise concerns how stress exposures are measured, and we provide guidelines for optimizing standardized and sensitive indicators of life stress. The third premise addresses the consequences of variations in the procedures for life event measurement with regard to the validity of the research designs employed. We show that life stress measures are susceptible to several sources of bias, and if these potential sources of bias are not controlled in the design of the research, spurious findings may result. Our goal is to provide a useful guide for researchers who consider life stress to be an important factor in their theoretical models of disease, wish to incorporate measures of life stress in their research, and seek to avoid the common pitfalls of past measurement practices.
引用
收藏
页码:727 / 745
页数:19
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