How is Stress Measured? (AQA A Level Psychology): Revision Note

Self-report scales

SRRS 

• Self-report scales have been developed to measure the effect of life changes on stress levels and health

  • The first was the Social Readjustment Rating Scale, created by Holmes & Rahe (1967)

• Holmes & Rahe studied the medical records of hospital patients, identifying the events in their lives that happened not long before they became ill, producing a list of 43 life changes

  • They asked several hundred participants to rate each item in these terms:

    • How much readjustment do you think would be needed to adapt to each of these life changes?', using a scale of 1 to 1000, with marriage given as an arbitrary 500 units of life change

  • Means for each item were calculated and divided by ten to create a life change unit (LCU) score for each change

• Participants tick off all the life events they have experienced over a specified period, typically 12 months and then add them up to gain a score that predicts their risk of stress-related illness in the next year or two

  • 150 points or fewer means no stress-related health problems are anticipated

  • 300 points or more suggests an 80% chance of stress-related illness in the next year or two, suggesting that life changes are correlated with stress

 Hassles & Uplifts Scale

• Kanner et al. (1981) developed a Hassles and Uplifts Scale to measure the relationship between daily hassles and uplifts and ill health

  • They argued that too much focus had been placed upon life events as stressors and not enough upon the daily hassles that wear people down and create chronic stress

• The Hassles Scale consists of 117 items selected by the researchers from seven categories: work, health, family, friends, environment, practical considerations and chance occurrences, while the Uplifts Scale has 135 items produced from the same content areas

  • The scale measures the severity of each hassle on a three-point scale (somewhat, moderately or extremely severe) reflecting the fact that the psychological meaning of each hassle to the individual is more important than how often it happens

• Daily hassles are defined by Kanner as those irritating, frustrating and distressing demands that we all face on a day-to-day basis, while uplifts are things like meeting friends, completing a task or getting enough sleep, which make us feel better

Physiological measures, including skin conductance response

Physiological measures 

• As stress affects the body, the resulting physical changes may be measured: 

  • Blood and urine samples can be analysed to check levels of stress hormones, such as cortisol and adrenaline

    • Blood pressure often rises during stressful situations and can be measured as an indicator of stress

  • Stress affects respiration, altering voice pitch and causing microtremors in speech muscles, so a stressed person may sound higher-pitched and shaky

  • Skin conductance response (SCR), also called galvanic skin response, measures the skin's ability to conduct electricity

    • Electrodes are attached to the index and middle fingers of one hand, and a tiny current is applied so that the more conductive the skin, the more current is conducted

    • During stress, sweating increases, which enhances the skin’s conductivity and results in a higher SCR reading

    • Along with heart rate, respiration and blood pressure, the SCR makes up a polygraph, more commonly known as the 'lie detector test'

    • There are two types of skin conductance; tonic skin conductance, or skin conductance level (SCL), is the baseline measured when we are not experiencing a stimulus, while phasic skin conductance is the response when something happens, such as being shown an image

      • SCR measurement is therefore a matter of comparing baseline SCRs against stimulated SCRs

Research which investigates the measurement of stress

• Rahe et al. (1970) tested the SRRS on over 2,000 sailors who completed a life changes questionnaire before a tour of duty lasting six to eight months

  • They found a positive correlation between their pre-cruise life changes and their number of reported illnesses throughout their time at sea

• DeLongis et al. (1988) used Kanner’s Hassles and Uplifts Scale to investigate the relationship between life events and daily hassles and uplifts and health

  • They found that daily hassles were more strongly correlated with stress and ill health than life events

• Villarejo et al. (2012) found that SCR readings detected participants' different stress levels with a success rate of 76.5%, supporting SCR as a valid method of measuring stress

Evaluation of the measurement of stress

Strengths

• The results of research into daily hassles may be used to formulate effective stress management and coping strategies to deal with stress and stress-related illnesses

• Stress management techniques such as biofeedback often use SCR measurements to indicate stress responses to help individuals control their stress levels

Limitations

• Many items on self-report stress measures are more like general categories than individual events, so they are open to varying interpretations

  • E.g., Dohrenwend et al. (1990) found 'serious illness and injury' was interpreted in a huge variety of ways, from flu to a life-threatening heart attack

    • This problem of intracategory variability reduces the validity of self-report measures and makes it difficult to assess the true relationship between stress, life events, hassles and illness

• SCR measurement takes account of the fact that different people have different baseline patterns of skin conductance, but individual differences go beyond this

  • Some people are described as stabiles, whose SCRs vary little when they are at rest and are not much influenced by internal thoughts or external events, while labiles show the opposite pattern

    • Failure to take these differences between participants into account threatens the validity of research using SCRs to measure stress

Issues & Debates

• Stress measurement tools adopt a nomothetic approach as they aim to apply universal laws to how stress is experienced and measured

  • This means individuals are assessed using the same standardised scales, assuming a general pattern in stress response across everyone

• Physiological measures (e.g., SCR) reduce stress to biological indicators, which may ignore important cognitive or emotional aspects of the stress experience

  • This biological reductionism contrasts with more holistic approaches that would consider thoughts, emotions, and social context