Life Change Events and Stress

Holmes and Rahe

Developed SRRS by taking 43 life events from 5000 patient records before the onset of chronic illness and asked 100 independent judges to rate the events from 1 to 100 with marriage set at 50. LCU’s came from these scores averaged out.

Rahe

Gave the SRRS questionnaire to 2700 US marines before a tour of duty and analysed their medical records during the tour. A significant positive correlation between LCU’s and illness was found supporting the link between LCU’s and physical illness.

Evaluation

  • Individual differences
  • Life events are rare compared to daily hassles
  • Validly/reliability of people’s memory can be questioned
  • Not all life events on the SRRS may affect health
  • Correlational upon analysis