1. Stress and Life Events
Lesson 8

2. Stress Washing Line

3. Learning Objectives
To understand how life events, both positive and negative, can lead to stress.
Success Criteria
Use a washing line to order stressful events.
Evaluate your own life events over the past 12 months using the SRRS.
Become familiar with the research by Rahe et al (1970).
 Challenge Criteria Complete a practice question.

4. Life Events
In your notes, make sure you’ve got 2-3 positive and negative events to include in an essay. Jot these down on a post-it and stick it to page 11!
Positive Life Events
Negative Life Events

5. Social Readjustment Ratings Scale
Read through the information at the top of page 11.
Now look at the handout on your desk, calculate your stress rating, according to the SRRS, over the past 12 months. How likely are you to be stressed?
Now complete the APFCC of Rahe et al (1970)

6. Evaluation
On page 12 you will find an acrostic. You need to fill this in for the evaluation of life events!

7. Evaluation of Life Changes
Lots of adaptations of the SRRS have turned up in magazines and self-help guides.
Research has suggested that life changes make you ill because of the readjustment you need to make to your life. However critics have now suggested that it is the ‘quality’ of the event which is crucial – events that are undesired, unscheduled or uncontrollable are most harmful.
Lazarus (1990) suggests that life changes are actually very rare in your life and that it is the minor hassles that cause more stress.
DeLongis et al (1988) investigated daily hassles. They studied 75 married couples. They were given the hassles and uplifts questionnaire and found no relationship between life events and health. But they did find a positive correlation (+.59) between hassles and next-day illnesses like flu, colds, sore throats and back ache.
There are individual differences in the way that people cope with life changes. The unexpected death of a spouse with be devastating, however, the death of an elderly spouse after a long and suffering illness may actually cause stress relief.
Most data collected in this area is correlational, this does not show a causal link between illness and life changes.
Brown (1974) suggests that people with high anxiety are more likely to report negative life events and would also be more prone to illness.

8. Practice Question
Questionnaires have often been used in stress research to measure the impact of life changes on health.
Outline one advantage and one disadvantage of using questionnaires in stress research. [3+3]

9. Mark scheme