Measuring stress: self-report scales (Social Readjustment Ratings Scale…

The idea

Two ways to put a number on stress, each carrying the other's weakness. Self-report asks the person. Holmes and Rahe's scale lists forty-three major events, the respondent ticks those experienced in the past year, and the life change units are totalled, high totals meaning raised illness risk. Kanner's scale instead samples the previous month's small demands and pleasures, each rated for frequency and severity. Skin conductance measures the body: two electrodes pass a tiny current across the fingertips, sympathetic arousal opens the eccrine sweat glands, and conductance rises within seconds. The trade is objectivity against meaning. Self-reports are retrospective and open to social desirability; conductance cannot tell stress from excitement, a warm room or caffeine.

What earns the marks

• Self-report defined by what it depends on, the person's own account, with the life events scale summing units across a fixed recent period.
• The hassles and uplifts measure described by its content and window: everyday demands and pleasures over the past month, rated for frequency and severity.
• Skin conductance explained mechanistically: sympathetic arousal increases eccrine sweat gland activity, which raises conductance measured between two electrodes.
• Its strengths stated as objectivity, speed and freedom from demand characteristics.
• AO3: self-report is retrospective, so recall is imperfect, and socially desirable answering distorts reports of drinking, arguments and coping.
• AO3: a fixed score assumes an event means the same to everyone, which appraisal research contradicts.
• AO3: skin conductance lacks specificity, since arousal from excitement, heat or caffeine produces the same trace, so triangulating it with cortisol and self-report is stronger than either alone.

Common mistakes and how to put them right

• Saying skin conductance measures stress directly.

  Put it right: It measures sympathetic arousal, of which stress is only one cause.

• Classing the life events scale as a physiological measure because it predicts physical illness.

• Losing the time frames, which differ.

  Put it right: The life events scale covers months, the hassles measure the past month.

• Writing that self-report is subjective and stopping there, without naming the cost as recall error, social desirability or differing appraisal.

• Praising physiological measures as fully objective while ignoring baseline differences between people and the diurnal rhythm in cortisol.

Exam tips

• Questions commonly want one strength and one limitation of each type, so plan them in pairs rather than emptying everything about one measure first.
• If the stem names one scale, criticise that scale specifically rather than self-report in general.
• The word objective in a stem is a signal to bring in physiological measurement.