Self-report & physiological measures of stress! Ev

Question 1

SELF-REPORT

SRRS & HSUP - contamination effect.

Answer 1

Items overlap w symptoms of physical / psychological disorders - scale may reflect illness instead of predict stress-related illness.

STRESS & ILLNESS ARE CONFOUNDED w hassles & life changes, should be separated.

Flawed methodology - direct observation > self-report measures of stress

Question 2

SRRS muddles controllable and uncontrollable life events

Answer 2

STERN: amount of uncontrollable life events = relatively reliable predictor of illness, controllable not so much.

HIGHLIGHTS IMPORTANCE OF INTERPRETATIONS INDIVIDUALS PLACE ON SCALE ITEMS!!

Scale lacks internal validity: doesn’t predict what it intends to

Question 3

ITEMS ARE AMBIGUOUS!!! Open to interpretation!!!

Answer 3

Many items on SRRS / HSUP = general categories > individual events. Open to interpretation by pps.
e.g. ‘SERIOUS INJURY’ - ‘a sprained arm’ to a ‘life-threatening heart attack’.

INTRA-CATEGORY VARIABILITY, REDUCES VALIDITY OF SELF-REPORT MEASURES, hard to establish true relationship between stress e.g life events / hassles, and illness.

Question 4

Other limits to consider of self-report measures of stress?

Answer 4

Self-report - demand response, emotional state, exaggerate??

Retrospective - memory decay, memory distortion?

Question 5

PHYSIOLOGICAL

Methodological flaws

Answer 5

Stress-inducing method, hard to establish cause & effect relationships - is the method causing or measuring stress? Lacks internal validity

Question 6

Individual differences -

Answer 6

doesn’t account for health issues e.g. diabetes / menopause / genetic disorders / hypersmth??? -

some people STABILES - little change in SCR / sweating even when reacting to a stimulus - not much influenced by internal thoughts or external events!!

some LABILES - sweat a lot even when not experiencing stimulus. Therefore not as simple as comparing phasic skin conductance with tonic skin conductance.

Question 7

Other limits to consider of physiological measures of stress?

Answer 7

Time consuming, technology expense

Question 8

Name 2 assessment devices used to measure physiological response for physiological measures of stress!

Answer 8

SCRs / polygraph

Question 9

Positives of Self-Report Measures of Stress?

Answer 9

• not time consuming / cheap / reliable / quantitative data
• easy to administer, scale up
• Operationalises stress? Clearly defined / measured

Question 10

Positives of physiological measures of stress?

Answer 10

• quantitative data
• scientific, objective
• visual interpretation easier to understand
• reliable, replicable, consistent
• Real life applications