15.1.4

Social Readjustment Rating Scales

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Sources of Stress

For an individual to experience stress, they must encounter a potential stressor. These can include major traumatic events, significant life changes and daily hassles.

Life events

Life events

  • Many potential stressors we face involve events or situations that force us to make changes in our ongoing lives and require time because we adjust to those changes.
    • Examples include the death of a relative, marriage, divorce, or moving house.
  • In the 1960s, psychiatrists Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe wanted to examine the link between life stressors and physical illness, and so developed the Social Readjustment Rating Scale.
Daily hassles

Daily hassles

  • Daily hassles are the minor irritations and annoyances that are part of our everyday lives and cause us stress.
    • E.g. rush hour traffic, lost keys, arguments with friends or family.
  • They can build on one another and leave us just as stressed as life change events. Researchers have shown that the frequency of daily hassles is actually a better predictor of both physical and psychological health than life change units are.
Uplifts

Uplifts

  • Uplifts are things that happen in our daily lives that relieve stress and make us feel better.
  • The accumulation of stress and changing stress levels can be studied using the hassles and uplifts scales.
Workplace

Workplace

  • Stressors can include situations in which someone is frequently exposed to challenging and unpleasant events, such as difficult, demanding, or unsafe working conditions.
  • Workplace stress can come from working relationships, pressures such as workload and deadlines, working environment, lack of control over workload and stresses related to an individual’s role in the workplace.
  • The build-up of workplace stress can easily lead to illness.

Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS)

Holmes and Rahe (1967) developed the SRRS while examining the link between life stressors and physical illness. They proposed that experiencing many stressful events increases the risk of developing illnesses.

Components

Components

  • The scale includes 43 life events that require varying degrees of personal readjustment.
  • Many life events that most people would consider pleasant (e.g. holidays, retirement, marriage) are among those listed on the SRRS.
  • Holmes and Rahe (1967) hypothesised that all life events, whether positive or negative, cause stress.
Rating scale

Rating scale

  • They asked 394 participants to provide a numerical estimate for each of the 43 items.
  • Each estimate corresponded to how much readjustment participants felt each event would require.
  • These estimates resulted in mean value scores for each event, often called life change units (LCUs).
LCUs

LCUs

  • The numerical scores ranged from 11 to 100. These numbers represented the perceived magnitude of life change that each event entails.
  • Death of a spouse ranked highest on the scale with 100 LCUs, and divorce ranked second highest with 73 LCUs.
  • Conversely, change in residence (20 LCUs), change in eating habits (15 LCUs), and vacation (13 LCUs) ranked low on the scale. Minor violations of the law ranked the lowest with 11 LCUs.
Accumulating scores

Accumulating scores

  • To complete the scale, participants checked 'yes' for events experienced within the last 12 months.
  • LCUs for each checked item are totalled for a score quantifying the amount of life change.
  • Extensive research has demonstrated that accumulating a high number of life change units within a brief period of time (one or two years) is related to a wide range of physical illnesses (even accidents and athletic injuries) and mental health problems (e.g. Monat & Lazarus (1991)).

Evaluation of the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS)

Holmes and Rahe (1967) developed the SRRS while examining the link between life stressors and physical illness. There are many criticisms of the theory.

Lack of causation

Lack of causation

  • The research is correlational and so doesn't imply causation.
Vague items on the scale

Vague items on the scale

  • Many of the items on the SRRS are vague.
    • For example, death of a close friend could involve the death of a long-absent childhood friend that requires little social readjustment.
  • Also, many of the life changes are related to each-other, so will overlap.
Association with poor mental health

Association with poor mental health

  • Despite the assumption that desirable and undesirable events are equally stressful, most evidence suggests that negative events are more strongly associated with poor mental health outcomes.
Does not consider appraisals

Does not consider appraisals

  • The most serious criticism is that the scale does not take into consideration respondents’ appraisals of the life events it contains, and the fact that the findings were self-report.
    • Appraisal of a stressor is a key element in the conceptualisation and experience of stress. Being fired from work may be devastating to some, but a welcome opportunity to obtain a better job for others.
Fame of study

Fame of study

  • Despite these criticisms, the SRRS remains one of the most well-known instruments in the study of stress.
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