Life Stress and Human Disorder: Conceptualization and Measurement of the Disordered Group

Abstract

Since the publication of the Dohrenwends’ classic book a decade ago (Dohrenwend & Dohrenwend, 1974), substantial improvement in the conceptualization and measurement of life events and social support has occurred. New, improved inventories appear regularly, more complex models are proposed, and advances in statistical sophistication are particularly noteworthy. In spite of these efforts, Rabkin and Struening’s (1976) conclusion, in reviewing the pre-1976 research, that life events account at the very best for 9% of the explained variance in predicting human disorder(2) still holds true. Although the evidence on social support is less extensive, recent studies which control for other input variables suggest that support is also a weak predictor of outcome status (e.g., Monroe, 1983; Williams, Ware, & Donald, 1981). In almost reflexive style, social scientists have viewed the poor predictive power of these input variables as due to inadequacies in measurement, research design, and theory. Such inadequacies may indeed prove to be limiting factors, but the possibility that other factors may account for the limited predictive power of event and support variables seems worth entertaining.