A psychometric study of life events and social readjustment

Abstract

An evaluation was made of the Schedule of Recent Events (SRE) and the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) based on a clinical sample of 353 individuals. Although differential weights in scaling life events are widely used, psychometric theory would indicate otherwise. That is, the simple counting of events (unit weights) exemplified by the SRE should yield scores that correlate almost perfectly with Life Change Unit (LCU) scores computed using differential weights from the SRRS. Empirically, the SRE had a correlation of 0.97 with the SRRS. Indeed, when random numbers were used as scaling weights, the SRE and SRRS (random weights) still had a correlation of 0.97. Furthermore, the simple counting of events (SRE) gave a higher internal consistency reliability (0.80) than the differential weights (SRRS) where the reliability estimate was 0.72. This trend was evident on six more homogeneous subscales of life events that had been previously identified using factor analysis. Finally, the influence of three response styles (social desirability, denial and carelessness) on the SRE, SRRS and six factor subscales was found to be almost negligible. The findings of this study seriously challenge the use of differential weights in the measurement of life event changes.