The assessment and measurement of adult life stress: Basic premises, operational principles, and design requirements.

Harkness, Kate L.; Monroe, Scott M.

doi:10.1037/abn0000178

Cited by 223Psychometric Methodologies and TestingStress Responses and CortisolHealth and Well-being Studies

The assessment and measurement of adult life stress: Basic premises, operational principles, and design requirements.

Harkness, Kate L., Monroe, Scott M.·2016·Journal of Abnormal Psychology

DOI 10.1037/abn0000178

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Abstract

Life stress is a central factor in the onset and course of a wide range of medical and psychiatric conditions. Determining the precise etiological and pathological consequences of stress, though, has been hindered by weaknesses in prevailing definitional and measurement practices. The purpose of the current paper is to evaluate the primary strategies for defining and measuring major and minor acute life events, chronic stressors, and daily hassles as informed by 3 basic scientific premises. The first premise concerns the manner in which stress is conceptualized and operationally defined, and specifically we assert that stress measures must not conflate the stress exposure with the stress response. The second premise concerns how stress exposures are measured, and we provide guidelines for optimizing standardized and sensitive indicators of life stress. The third premise addresses the consequences of variations in the procedures for life event measurement with regard to the validity of the research designs employed. We show that life stress measures are susceptible to several sources of bias, and if these potential sources of bias are not controlled in the design of the research, spurious findings may result. Our goal is to provide a useful guide for researchers who consider life stress to be an important factor in their theoretical models of disease, wish to incorporate measures of life stress in their research, and seek to avoid the common pitfalls of past measurement practices. (PsycINFO Database Record

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The Adolescent STRAIN gives no guidance on interpreting items, so variability may increase because participants understand stressors differently.
“Third, notwithstanding its considerable strengths (e.g., scalability, behaviorally-anchored probe questions, branching logic), the Adolescent STRAIN does not guide participants on how to interpret items, which could increase variability attributable to their idiosyncratic understanding of what constitutes a stressor (see Harkness and Monroe 2016).”
From Life stress and suicide in adolescents (2019) · cites this paper as Harkness and Monroe 2016
The Adolescent STRAIN uses predefined criteria to separate acute events from chronic difficulties, a strength relative to most other life stress measures.
“An advantage of the Adolescent STRAIN compared to most other life stress assessment instruments is that it differentiates acute life events and chronic difficulties based on a priori criteria (see Harkness and Monroe 2016).”
From Life stress and suicide in adolescents (2019) · cites this paper as Harkness and Monroe 2016

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Coping, emotion regulation, and psychopathology in childhood and adolescence: A meta-analysis and narrative review.
Compas, B. E., Jaser, S. S., Bettis, A. H., Watson, K. H., Gruhn, M. A., Dunbar, J. P., Williams, E., & Thigpen, J. C. (2017) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/bul0000110 · Cited by 1,555 · see citing works
“This encompasses efforts to regulate responses (including emotions) to acute life events, chronic stressors, daily hassles, and conditions of chronic adversity, all of which have been shown to be significant risk factors for symptoms of psychopathology (Harkness & Monroe, 2016).”
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“Second, asking participants to retrospectively report which life events they have experienced can be problematic because participants may misremember or misreport their past events (Harkness & Monroe, 2016; Pachana, Brilleman, & Dobson, 2011; Raphael, Cloitre, & Dohrenwend, 1991).”
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Authors: Harkness, K. L., & Monroe, S. M.
Affiliations: Queen's University (CA)
University of Notre Dame (US)
ORCID: Harkness, Kate L.
Monroe, Scott M.
Venue: Journal of Abnormal Psychology
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Published: 2016-07
Volume: 125
Issue: 5
Pages: 727-745
ISSN: 0021-843X (ISSN-L)
1939-1846
DOI: 10.1037/abn0000178
OpenAlex: W2418072186
Semantic Scholar: 8569c86536810c6c87bab3380090ccc38929cce5
Cited by: 223
References: 110
Citations by year: 2026: 19 · 2025: 20 · 2024: 22 · 2023: 22 · 2022: 21 · 2021: 33 · 2020: 24 · 2019: 31 · 2018: 16 · 2017: 10 · 2016: 4
FWCI: 22.28
Type: journal article
Language: en
Open access: closed
Locations: Journal of Abnormal Psychology (publishedVersion)
PubMed (publishedVersion)
Funders: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (435-2012-1536)
John Simon Guggenheim Foundation
Topics: Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Psychometric Methodologies and Testing
Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Behavioral Neuroscience › Stress Responses and Cortisol
Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Health and Well-being Studies
Keywords: life events, stress measurement, daily hassles, chronic stressors, measurement bias, stress symptoms, psychosocial stress
MeSH terms: Female, Humans, Interview, Psychological, Life Change Events, Male, Psychometrics, Research Design, Stress, Psychological, Self Report

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The assessment and measurement of adult life stress: Basic premises, operational principles, and design requirements.

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