1) Holmes and Rahe assumed that both positive and negative life events involve change, and that change leads to experiencing stress.
2) To test this assumption they studied approx 5000 hospital patients' records and noted any major life events that had occured before the person became ill.
3) It wa found that patients were likely to have experienced life changes prior to becoming ill and that more serious life changes seemed to be more linked to stress and illness.
They ranked life events on the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS)
1) Holmes and Rahe made a list of 43 common life events and asked loads of people to give each one a score to say how stressful it was. They called the numbers that made up each score the Life Change Units (LCU). The higher this number of LCU's, the more stressful it was.
2) Then they ranked the events from most stressful to least stressful and called it the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS).
3) They found a positive correlation between the likelihood of illness and the score on the SRRS - as one variable increases, so does the other. The more stress a person experienced, the more likely they are to suffer illness.
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