The DOI matches its Crossref record; 49 of the 49 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Methodological aspects of life events research
Abstract
This paper reviews the methodology of studies of recent life events and illness, as relevant to psychosomatic studies. Three critical issues are discussed: the method of data collection; elimination of events which are consequences of illness; quantification of stress. It is concluded that the most important aspect is collection of data by careful interview technique covering defined events and time periods. Self-report event questionnaires, although heuristically valuable in the past, must now be regarded as inadequate. Exclusion of events which may be consequences of illness is also important in psychosomatic studies. Different methods of quantification produce refinements but are less crucial and alternative approaches may give similar results.
Overview
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“Nearly all such studies have relied on a questionnaire or interview-based retrospective assessments of SLEs completed by respondents with the interview-based measures likely producing more valid results (Brown, Sklair, Harris, & Birley, 1973; Dohrenwend, Link, Kern, Shrout, & Markowitz, 1987; Dohrenwend, Raphael, Schwartz, & Skodol, 1993; Dohrenwend, Dohrenwend, Dodson, & Shrout, 1984; Paykel, 198”
From The development of an environmental risk score using Swedish National Registers and its impact on subsequent episodes of major depression (2025) · cites this paper as Paykel, 1983
In the citing paper
“Nearly all such studies have relied on a questionnaire or interview-based retrospective assessments of SLEs completed by respondents with the interview-based measures likely producing more valid results (Brown, Sklair, Harris, & Birley, 1973; Dohrenwend, Link, Kern, Shrout, & Markowitz, 1987; Dohrenwend, Raphael, Schwartz, & Skodol, 1993; Dohrenwend, Dohrenwend, Dodson, & Shrout, 1984; Paykel, 198”
From The development of an environmental risk score using Swedish National Registers and its impact on subsequent episodes of major depression (2025) · cites this paper as Paykel, 1983
Citations
Cites
The social readjustment rating scale
Holmes, T. H., & Rahe, R. H. (1967) · Journal of Psychosomatic Research · doi:10.1016/0022-3999(67)90010-4 · Cited by 11,560
Social Origins of Depression: A Study of Psychiatric Disorder in Women.
Schnitzer, P. K., Brown, G. W., & Harris, T. (1980) · Contemporary Sociology A Journal of Reviews · doi:10.2307/2065631 · Cited by 3,053
Social Origins of Depression: A Study of Psychiatric Disorder in Women
McDaniel, E. G. (1980) · The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease · doi:10.1097/00005053-198009000-00013 · Cited by 1,894
Stressful Life Events: Their Nature and Effects
Turfboer, R. (1975) · American Journal of Psychiatry · doi:10.1176/ajp.132.7.772-a · Cited by 1,452
Exemplification of a Method for Scaling Life Events: The PERI Life Events Scale
Dohrenwend, B. S., Askenasy, A. R., Krasnoff, L., & Dohrenwend, B. P. (1978) · Journal of Health and Social Behavior · doi:10.2307/2136536 · Cited by 1,211
Paykel, E. S. (1969) · Archives of General Psychiatry · doi:10.1001/archpsyc.1969.01740240113014 · Cited by 972
Self-citationNeurosis and the Social Environment
Henderson, S., Byrne, D. G., & Duncan‐Jones, P. (1982) · Cited by 741
Paykel, E. S. (1971) · Archives of General Psychiatry · doi:10.1001/archpsyc.1971.01750160052010 · Cited by 736
Self-citationLife Events and Social Support in Puerperal Depression
Paykel, E. S., Emms, E. M., Fletcher, J., & Rassaby, E. (1980) · The British Journal of Psychiatry · doi:10.1192/bjp.136.4.339 · Cited by 686
Self-citationCrises and Life Changes and the Onset of Schizophrenia
Brown, G. W., & Birley, J. L. T. (1968) · Journal of Health and Social Behavior · doi:10.2307/2948405 · Cited by 680
Neurosis and the social environment
Bebbington, P. (1982) · Journal of Psychosomatic Research · doi:10.1016/0022-3999(82)90026-5 · Cited by 642
Stressful Life Events and Their Contexts
Lewinsohn, P. M., & Hoberman, H. M. (1983) · American Journal of Psychiatry · doi:10.1176/ajp.140.6.809 · Cited by 578
Suicide Attempts and Recent Life Events
Paykel, E. S. (1975) · Archives of General Psychiatry · doi:10.1001/archpsyc.1975.01760210061003 · Cited by 386
Self-citationLife-events and psychiatric disorders Part 1: some methodological issues
Brown, G. W., Sklair, F., Harris, T. O., & Birley, J. L. T. (1973) · Psychological Medicine · doi:10.1017/s0033291700046365 · Cited by 343
A Scale to Measure the Stress of Life Events
Tennant, C., & Andrews, G. (1976) · Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry · doi:10.3109/00048677609159482 · Cited by 326
Jenkins, C. D. (1979) · Archives of General Psychiatry · doi:10.1001/archpsyc.1979.01780040021001 · Cited by 252
Life Event Questionnaires for Measuring Presumptive Stress
Horowitz, M. J., Schaefer, C. A., Hiroto, D. S., Wilner, N., & Levin, B. (1977) · Psychosomatic Medicine · doi:10.1097/00006842-197711000-00005 · Cited by 216
Recent life changes, myocardial infarction, and abrupt coronary death. Studies in Helsinki
Rahe, R. H. (1974) · Archives of Internal Medicine · doi:10.1001/archinte.133.2.221 · Cited by 202
Life events, depressive relapse and maintenance treatment
Paykel, E. S., & Tanner, J. (1976) · Psychological Medicine · doi:10.1017/s0033291700015920 · Cited by 176
Self-citationQuantitative study of recall of life events
Casey, R. L., Masuda, M., & Holmes, T. H. (1967) · Journal of Psychosomatic Research · doi:10.1016/0022-3999(67)90013-x · Cited by 147
Recent life events in schizophrenia and depression
Jacobs, S., Prusoff, B. A., & Paykel, E. S. (1974) · Psychological Medicine · doi:10.1017/s0033291700045906 · Cited by 133
Self-citationLife events, psychiatric disorder and physical illness
Brown, G. W. (1981) · Journal of Psychosomatic Research · doi:10.1016/0022-3999(81)90073-8 · Cited by 111
Symptom Intensity and Life Events
UHLENHUTH, E. H. (1973) · Archives of General Psychiatry · doi:10.1001/archpsyc.1973.01750340015002 · Cited by 107
Monroe, S. M. (1982) · Archives of General Psychiatry · doi:10.1001/archpsyc.1982.04290050074014 · Cited by 97
Fall-off in the reporting of life events
Brown, G. W., & Harris, T. (1982) · Social Psychiatry · doi:10.1007/bf00583889 · Cited by 97
The contextual threat of life events: the concept and its reliability
Tennant, C., Smith, A., Bebbington, P., & Hurry, J. (1979) · Psychological Medicine · doi:10.1017/s0033291700032086 · Cited by 95
An Anglo‐American comparison of the scaling of life events
Paykel, E. S., McGUINESS, B., & GOMEZ, J. (1976) · British Journal of Medical Psychology · doi:10.1111/j.2044-8341.1976.tb02370.x · Cited by 93
Self-citationIllness in relation to life situation and sick-role tendency
Thurlow, H. J. (1971) · Journal of Psychosomatic Research · doi:10.1016/0022-3999(71)90076-6 · Cited by 89
UHLENHUTH, E. H., Haberman, S. J., Balter, M., & Lipman, R. S. (1977) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/978-1-4684-2355-6_7 · Cited by 78
The Reporting of Recent Stress in the Lives of Psychiatric Patients
Hudgens, R. W., Robins, E., & DeLong, W. B. (1970) · The British Journal of Psychiatry · doi:10.1192/bjp.117.541.635 · Cited by 77
The endogenous-neurotic continuum in depression: Rater independence and factor distributions
Paykel, E. S., Prusoff, B. A., & Klerman, G. L. (1971) · Journal of Psychiatric Research · doi:10.1016/0022-3956(71)90010-0 · Cited by 73
Self-citationLife Event Reports by Psychiatric Patients, Nonpatients, and Their Partners
Yager, J. (1981) · Archives of General Psychiatry · doi:10.1001/archpsyc.1981.01780280111013 · Cited by 71
The Value of Interviewing Family and Friends in Assessing Life Stressors
Schless, A. P. (1978) · Archives of General Psychiatry · doi:10.1001/archpsyc.1978.01770290047004 · Cited by 69
The Reporting of Recent Stress in the Lives of Psychiatric Patients
Hudgens, R. W. (1971) · The British Journal of Psychiatry · doi:10.1192/bjp.119.548.113 · Cited by 68
The reliability of reporting adverse experiences
Steele, G. P., Henderson, S., & Duncan‐Jones, P. (1980) · Psychological Medicine · doi:10.1017/s0033291700044056 · Cited by 65
Problems of internal consistency and scaling in life event schedules
Cleary, P. J. (1981) · Journal of Psychosomatic Research · doi:10.1016/0022-3999(81)90008-8 · Cited by 59
Reliability of life‐event ratings: An independent replication
Parry, G. D., Shapiro, D. A., & Davies, L. (1981) · British Journal of Clinical Psychology · doi:10.1111/j.2044-8260.1981.tb00507.x · Cited by 54
A Scale to Measure the Cause of Life Events
Tennant, C., & Andrews, G. (1977) · Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry · doi:10.3109/00048677709159555 · Cited by 54
Reliability of Life Change Cluster Scores
McDonald, B. W., Pugh, W. M., Gunderson, E. K. E., & Rahe, R. H. (1972) · British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology · doi:10.1111/j.2044-8260.1972.tb00834.x · Cited by 50
Scaling procedures in life events research
Grant, I., Sweetwood, H., Gerst, M. S., & Yager, J. (1978) · Journal of Psychosomatic Research · doi:10.1016/0022-3999(78)90009-0 · Cited by 32
The Reliability of Reports of Early Separations
Finlay‐Jones, R., Scott, R., Duncan‐Jones, P., Byrne, D. G., & Henderson, S. (1981) · Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry · doi:10.3109/00048678109159406 · Cited by 30
The Origins and course of psychopathology : methods of longitudinal research
Strauss, J. S., Babigian, H. M., & Roff, M. F. (1977) · Cited by 25
Scaling of stressful life events
Shrout, P. E. (1981) · Cited by 22
Recall and Reporting of Life Events
Paykel, E. S. (1980) · Archives of General Psychiatry · doi:10.1001/archpsyc.1980.01780170127016 · Cited by 18
Self-citationAdversity and mental health: an empirical investigation of their relationship
Surtees, P. G., Kiff, J., & Rennie, D. (1981) · Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica · doi:10.1111/j.1600-0447.1981.tb00774.x · Cited by 12
Lipman, R. S., Hm, H., Jf, B., Park, L. C., & Cole, J. O. (1965) · PubMed · Cited by 10
Lebensereignisse in Abh�ngigkeit von soziodemographischen Variablen
Schmid, I., Scharfetter, C., & Binder, J. (1981) · Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology · doi:10.1007/bf00582689 · Cited by 9
The Relation between Contextual and Reported Threat due to Life Events: A Controlled Study
Ndetei, D. M., & Vadher, A. (1981) · The British Journal of Psychiatry · doi:10.1192/bjp.139.6.540 · Cited by 8
Research works printed but not linked: 2
- Lipman, 1965, Patient report of significant life situation events, Dis Nerv Syst, 26, 586
- Rahe, 1974, Recent life changes, myocardial infarction, and abrupt coronary death, Arch Intern Med, 133, 221, 10.1001/archinte.1974.00320140059006 · DOI
Cited by
Sorted by citations
The role of psychological and biological factors in postinfective gut dysfunction
Gwee, K.-A., Leong, Y.-L., Graham, C., McKendrick, M. W., Collins, S. M., Walters, S. J., Underwood, J. E., & Read, N. W. (1999) · Gut · doi:10.1136/gut.44.3.400 · Cited by 764
Dohrenwend, B. P. (2006) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.132.3.477 · Cited by 601
The Nature of Nurture: Genetic Influence on “Environmental” Measures
Plomin, R., & Bergeman, C. S. (1991) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x00070278 · Cited by 556
Life stressors as risk factors in depression.
Mazure, C. M. (1998) · Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice · doi:10.1111/j.1468-2850.1998.tb00151.x · Cited by 535
Stress and Exacerbation in Ulcerative Colitis: A Prospective Study of Patients Enrolled in Remission
Levenstein, S., Prantera, C., Varvo, V., Scribano, M. L., Andreoli, A., Luzi, C., Arcà, M., Berto, E., Milite, G., & Marcheggiano, A. (2000) · American Journal of Gastroenterology · doi:10.1111/j.1572-0241.2000.02012.x · Cited by 451
Metadata
- Authors
- Paykel, E. S.
- Affiliations
- St George's, University of London (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Paykel, E.S.
- Venue
- Journal of Psychosomatic Research
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 1983-01
- Volume
- 27
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 341-352
- ISSN
- 0022-3999 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1993353042
- Cited by
- 412
- References
- 49
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 9 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 5 · 2014: 5 · 2013: 9 · 2012: 13
- FWCI
- 12.26
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Psychosomatic Research (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Survey Methodology and Nonresponse
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Mental Health Research Topics
- Keywords
- life events, recent life events, illness, psychosomatic medicine, stress measurement, interview techniques, self-report questionnaire, event selection, data collection methods
- MeSH terms
- Data Collection, Humans, Interviews as Topic, Life Change Events, Psychophysiologic Disorders, Research Design, Time Factors
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
