The importance of stress in the understanding of adolescent health and well‐being is widely documented. The measurement of adolescent stress has however been subjected to sufficient methodological and conceptual criticism in recent times to warrant a concerted re‐evaluation of the exercise. This study sought information on the nature of adolescent stressors, building on a previous instrument developed by the first author to ask adolescents themselves to inform the development of a pool of new items reflecting stressor experience and to advise on the wording of these items to comprehensively assess that experience. This pool of items was then administered as a self‐reported questionnaire to a large sample of school‐age adolescents (N>1000) together with a scale to assess the intensity of distress arising from stressor occurrence. Principal components analysis of the questionnaire yielded 10 internally reliable dimensions of adolescent stress, the nature of which were consistent with the available literature on adolescent stressor experience. Scales constructed from this PCA related positively to measures of anxiety and depression, and negatively to a measure of self‐esteem, suggesting that they were valid measures of adolescent stress. Test–retest reliability was good for all scales. The resultant Adolescent Stress Questionnaire (ASQ) is therefore suggested to have potential for the measurement of adolescent stress in both research and clinical contexts.

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The initiation and subsequent development of what I once immodestly labeled `the attraction paradigm' are described. Though an after-the-fact reconstruction of a given program of research and theory may appear to result from planful, rational, insightful, and even prescient actions, the actual process is more often a combination of multiple personal motives, semi-random input from a wide variety of sources, sheer luck, and semi-delusional tenacity. In any event, some highlights and landmarks of over 35 years of attraction research are summarized. The story includes the initial decision to investigate the effect of attitude similarity-dissimilarity on attraction, the gradual development of the linear function that specifies the relationship between seemingly diverse stimulus events and evaluative responses such as attraction, and the construction of a theoretical model that began with a focus on conditioning but was eventually expanded as `the behaviour sequence', incorporating cognitive constructs in order to deal with such interpersonal complexities as love. As a postscript, I describe our current efforts to place the components of adult attachment patterns within this model in an effort to predict more precisely various aspects of interpersonal relationships.

REFERENCES BRONFENBRENNER, U. Toward a theoretical model for the analysis of parent-child relationships in a social context. In J. Glide-well (Ed.), Parental attitudes and child behavior.