Outline and evaluate research into the effects of life events on health outcomes

It was found by Holmes and Rahe that higher LCU scores for the previous year had a greater risk of illness in the following year, such as sudden cardiac death, non fatal heart attacks, and diabetes of leukaemia.

However, there were some weaknesses to the SRRS. The scale itself is ambiguous in the sense that each event could be interpreted differently by each individual. For instance some people might see divorce as a good thing, a relief of stress, if they had been able to escape an unhappy marriage. Whereas another person could see divorce as an exceedingly negative thing. The SRRS therefore has no way of taking individual differences into account and makes the LCU score very subjective as well as the fact it only reflects the opinion of a small number of people. In addition to this the extent to which an event has an impact on someone isn’t taken into account because each event is given a particular value.

The SRRS also only shows a correlation, which therefore doesn’t establish a cause and effect; it only establishes a link. There is no way to tell that stressful life events cause a decline in health or whether an individual’s health may cause a stressful event to occur. An example of this might be a mental illness causing deterioration in a relationship. Alternatively there could be another factor that affects both of the variables.

Using the SRRS Rahe et al carried out a study with the intent to find out if the scores on the SRRS. The participants comprised of 2500 American sailors who were given the SRRS to see how many of the life events they had experienced in the last six months and the total score on the SRRS for each participant was recorded. Each of the scores was correlated with the sailor’s illness scores, which were obtained through detailed records of each sailor’s health status during a six month tour of duty.

It was found that there as a positive correlation of 0.118 between LCU scores and illness scores. Despite being small, the positive correlation is significant because it outlines a positive relationship between the frequency of illness and LCU scores. However because the correlation was not perfect it is clear that there must be more factors other than LCU scores that increase illness.

However, there were flaws in Rahe et al’s experiment. The experiment has arguably low population validity because not only was the experiment andocentric as the participants were all male, but it was also ethnocentric as the participants were all American citizens. This decreases the amount the results are generalisable to the rest of the population because the male, American sailors could all have characteristics specific to that group of people, they might all suffer from the same illnesses as if one sailor had it, it could be passed around the other sailors on that ship. Alternatively they could all have fairly good immune systems to start with due to the fact they might need to pass medical tests in order to be a sailor. In addition to this, stress could be inherent in the job as a sailor which may mean they are more susceptible to stress than other individuals, for instance having to deal with being separated from their loved ones for long periods of time.

Rahe et al’s research is also reliant on retrospective of the sailors, which could have two effects. Participants could find it difficult to recall accurately, due to the fact it is relying on their memory. Or, a participant might exaggerate. This could lead to the results being inaccurate and therefore reduces the reliability of the result the study yeilded.