The trials of childhood: The development, reliability, and validity of the daily life stressors scale

Abstract

The assessment of daily life stress in youngsters is receiving extensive research attention due to its pertinence to psychological and medical problems. This investigation addressed concerns from previous studies of daily life stress in children and adolescents. These included an integration with rathlgs of negative affectivity, exploration of developmental changes, and presentation of psychometric data. The Daily Life Stressors Scale (DLSS) is a 30-item measure designed to assess the severity of aversive feelings and evelyday events for youngsters. Three groups of children and adolescents were evaluated to assess the scale's test-retest reliability and construct and concurrent validity.Developmental changes in a normative group were also examined. Results indicated the DLSS to be moderately reliable and valid for children. Also, male children reported more stress than female children, whereas female adolescents reported more stress than male adolescents. Results were discussed with respect to resilience, gender role stress, therapy implications, and usefulness for determining precursors to physiological problems.KEY WORDS: daily stress; negative affectivity; childhood.Research on stress in children and adolescents has burgeoned in recent years, with investigators exploring both major life stressors (e.g., Kearney, Drabman, and Beasley parental divorce) and those that occur daily. Research into the effects of major life events on children predates work on daily life stressors, thus providing more information about assessment (Arnold, 1990), course (Cohen, Burt, & Bjorck, 1987), related effects (Kaplan, Grossman, Landa, Shenker, & Weinhold, 1986), and treatment (Noshpitz, 1990). Several researchers (e.g., Banez & Compas, 1990) have speculated, however, that daily life stressors may have greater impact on an individual's quality of life because these events are more frequent, psychologically proximal, and predictive of present and future psychological symptoms (Kanner, Coyne, Schaefer, & Lazarus, 1981).Common problems associated with increased stress in school-aged children include eating and sleeping pattern changes, lack of concentration or motivation at school, somatic complaints, and social withdrawal (Sears & Milburn, 1990). In addition, stress during adolescence is related to depression and suicide, substance abuse, eating disorders, and problematic parent-adolescent interactions (Hendren, 1990). Among more "clinical" populations, the effects of stressors such as relocation have been noted. For example, persons with mental retardation sometimes display increased maladaptive behavior upon relocation to another residential facility (Hemming, Lavender, & Pill, 1981), and youngsters placed in foster-care programs often show increased symptoms of internalizing and externalizing disorders (Tuma, 1989). Unfortunately, research into the assessment of daily life stressors in children is in its infancy and remains marked by several methodological and conceptual problems.Perhaps the most enveloping conceptual problem i...

Streptococcal Upper Respiratory Tract Infections and Psychosocial Stress Predict Future Tic and Obsessive-Compulsive Symptom Severity in Children and Adolescents with Tourette Syndrome and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

“…In addition, measurements of psychosocial stress were made using parent report (Parent Perceived Stress Scale, PSS-P) (27), youth self-report (Daily Life Stressors Scale, DLSS) (28), and a clinician-rated measure of long-term contextual threat (Yale Children's Global Stress Index, YCGSI) (19). Normal controls were also assessed for their stress level for comparison with the subjects who had been diagnosed with TS and/or OCD (12).…”

Family and School Spillover in Adolescents’ Daily Lives

“…Although we did not expect there to be large gender differences, we hypothesized that differences would reflect greater spillover among girls. Females have been shown to report more daily stress and greater emotional reactivity than males (Almeida & Kessler, 1998;Kearney, Drabman, & Beasley, 1993). In particular, events that involve family members have been found to have a greater impact on girls than boys (Larson & Asmussen, 1991).…”

Social Anxiety and Social Phobia in Youth

“…A revision of this scale has also been reported (Muris, Merckelbach, Schmidt, & Mayer, 1999) r Spence Children's Anxiety Scale, a measure of childhood anxiety with subscales for social phobia, separation anxiety, panic attacks/agoraphobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, generalized anxiety, and fears of physical injury (Spence, Barrett, & Turner, 2003) r Fear Survey Schedule for Children-Revised, a measure of general fearfulness with a factor related to fear of failure and criticism (Ollendick, 1983) r School Refusal Assessment Scale-Revised, a measure of the relative strength of different functions of school refusal behavior with a subscale for escaping aversive social and/or evaluative situations at school (Kearney, 2002) Other anxiety self-report questionnaires also contain items that are relevant to social anxiety and social phobia in youths. Common examples include the: r Childhood Anxiety Sensitivity Index, a measure of fear of dangerousness of internal physical symptoms with items surrounding worry about others' knowledge of these symptoms (Silverman, Ginsburg, & Goedhart, 1999) r Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children, measures of general anxiety and negative affectivity with items relevant to worries about making mistakes and others' perceptions and reactions (Reynolds & Richmond, 1985;Spielberger, 1973) r Daily Life Stressors Scale and other hassles scales, measures of difficulties that youths encounter daily with items surrounding conversations with, and performances before, others (Kearney, Drabman, & Beasley, 1993) r Test Anxiety Scale for Children, a measure of test anxiety with items surrounding worry about performance in this area (Sarason, Davidson, Lighthall, Waite, & Ruebush, 1960) r Youth Self-Report, a measure of internalizing and externalizing behavior problems with items relevant to social anxiety and withdrawal (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001).…”