Stress and life changes (The SRRS scale) – Flashcards

- Holmes and Rahe designed in 1967 - Made a list of things that would be a change you'd need to adjust to; gave it to hundreds of men and women of all ages/backgrounds. asked them to order them according to how much they'd affect their life to make "life change units"

They asked the participants to check any of the life events that they had experienced over a 2 year period. The researcher totaled up their score and it was used to reflect on people's stress levels. Holmes and Rahe proposed that a score of 150 or more increased the chances of stress related health breakdown by 30%, whereas a score of over 300 increased it by 50%.

This scale is more targeted towards an older age group, as there are events such as having a mortgage, which are not suitable for younger ages, therefore, it is not generaliseable to younger people. It does not take in to account different people's circumstances and things which could turn your life around like a jail term only receives 40 points!

They studied navy staff and got them to do the SRRS for the 6 months before their tour of duty and then while they were on their 6 month tour of duty, they looked at their medical records to see whether staff got more ill if their SRRS score was high.

They found that there was a positive (but weak) correlation between having more stress before the 6 months tour of duty and then getting ill, during the time they are touring.

It was better to keep the medical records from the ship doctor, because it is more objective, as the doctor would not be biased, compared to getting it from the navy staff themselves, as they may lie, saying they are well, when they may be hiding it. They did the study on sailors who stayed together, so this means that we are sure that they ate the same food, experienced the same weather,were the same age, and this standardises the study to each sailor, and reduces extraneous participational and situational variables.

It is not very generalisable to other people, as their kind of stress is specific to their kind of life.Still have not ruled out lifestyle factors such as whether their behaviour before they travelled was making them ill and not whether they were stressed.

Volunteer sample of 50 men in a dentists and they were examined by the dentist and given a score on how much they had got gum/jaw disease. Then gave them a life experience survey which they had to fill in.

The higher their score for disease, the higher their stress score - positive correlation. Stress had turned up cortisol and so the immune system goes down and the bacteria in the mouth does not get suppressed.

They operationalised the study by using a dentist rather than asking the volunteered people to tell them, so its more objective. It is also a single blind study because the dentist did not know their stress scores when he gave them their gum/jaw disease score, which reduces investigator effects.

When they are stressed, they may smoke, eat more sugar and not have time to floss and clean their teeth properly and these are extraneous variables, meaning that we can not be sure that stress is the only factor which affects jaw/gum disease.