Life Changes

RESEARCH ON LIFE CHANGES

• Holmes and Rahe were main psychologists for researching life changes link to stress.
• Both positive and neggative and in turn affected health.
• Using Life Changes to Measure Stress
• Social Readjustment Scale (SRRS) based on 43 life events taken from over 5000 patients. 
• In order to establish stressfullness of each event, a panel of 400 participants were asked to score each event by how much readjustment would be required by someone. (numerical)
• Key Study: Rahe et al.
• This technique used to test Holmes and Rahes hypothese that number of life events a person experienced would be positively correlated with illness... aimed at a normal populartion.
• What did they do?
• Military version of SRRS given to men on board 3 US navy ships (2700 men) 
• Questionnaire filled out j before a tour of dury noting all life events experienced in previous six months.
• Illness schore calculated on basis of the number, type and severity of all illnesses recorded during tour of duth.
• What did they find?
• Positive correlation between LCU score and illness score of +.118.
• Men scoring low in SRE scores had low levels of illness at sea.
• High SRE scores experience high levels of illness.
• Both + and - events are invluded in the SRRS…