The measurement of stress-inducing life events and life styles: Questions of conceptual independence and discriminant validity

Abstract

Research on psycho-social sources of coronary heart disease (CHD) has focused on two basic ideas: on the one hand that CHD is the result of the accumulation of stress-inducing events and, on the other hand, that CHD stems from the way in which individuals live their lives and respond to events that do occur. While it is relatively easy to separate these ideas at the conceptual level, the research reported here indicates that the two most prominent operationalizations of life situation and life style share some degree of commonality in their domains. Specifically, a comparison of the responses of 205 individuals indicate that variations in scores on the Jenkins Activity Survey are associated with variations in scores on subjective but not objective items on the Recent Life Changes Questionnaire. The implications of these results for the study of psycho-social factors in CHD are discussed.