Daily Hassles

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The hassles and uplifts scale, or HSUP measures respondent's attitudes toward daily situations. Instead of focusing on the more highly stressful life events, the HSUP provides a way of evaluating both the positive and negative events that occur in each person's daily life.

A01: Describe how daily hassles and uplifts are used as a measure of stress (6 marks)

The Daily Hassles and Uplifts Scale was devised by Lazarus et al (1981).

It is a Questionnaire that contains 117 items.

Each item is a daily event.

Participants are asked to complete the questionnaire individually at the end of their day.

The items are rated as an uplift and a daily hassle on a scale of 0-3 (0= not applicable, 1= Somewhat, 2= Quite a bit, 3 = a great deal).

The total daily hassles score and uplifts score are used as an indicator of stress.

A01 Key

Study:

Delongis

et al (1982) tested

the hypothesis that daily hassles are a better predictor of later ill health

than life events. 100 participants (all over 45) were asked to complete four

questionnaires each:

1) Hassles scale (117 items)

2) Uplifts scale (135 items)

3) Life events questionnaire

4) Health questionnaire

The results were probably not expected: hassles were significantly positively

correlated with ill- health, whereas uplifts and most surprisingly life events

were not.

A01 Key study: Kanner et al

•Aim: To investigate an association between daily

hassles, uplifts and symptoms of stress AND compare the outcome with the use of

the SRRS as a predictor of stress symptoms

•Procedure: 100 men and women,

aged 45-64 were studied. They completed the “Hassles & Uplifts”

questionnaire once a month, for 10 months. They were also assessed each month

using the SRRS, and completed a health questionnaire

•Findings: Daily Hassles were

positively correlated with psychological symptoms associated with stress. There

was a negative correlation between uplifts and stress symptoms. The Daily

Hassles predictor of stress symptoms than the SRRS

•Conclusions: Everyday stressors

are a better predictor of stress, and vulnerability to illness, than life

events

Supporting study Courtois at al (2007)

•In

support of the research conducted by Kanner et al. (1981), Courtois et al

(2007) investigated the influence of both life events and daily hassles on

adolescent drinking and smoking. They did find a correlation between these

problems and life events, BUT the relationship with daily hassles was stronger.

•Important daily hassles related to family problems, issues at school and

self-perception. Having more daily hassles affected drug use in two ways:

stressed adolescents started using alcohol and tobacco earlier (1) and became

dependent on them (2))

A02 : Evaluation of daily hassles and life events

research

Correlational data- We cannot draw casual conclusions

between daily hassles and stress related problems. However, the correlations show

that there is an association and therefore a possibility that daily hassles

have negative effects on our well-being and health.

Cultural variations in amount of social support- Social

support is a protective factor against stress and it varies amongst different

cultures. Therefore there are cross-cultural differences in the statement that

daily hassles contribute to health and social problems.

Retrospective

data.

Furthermore,

research into daily hassles and stress related illness is based upon the

collection of retrospective data, whereby participants are usually asked to

rate the hassles that have occurred over the last month. This relies upon

peoples memories being a. accurate and b. consistent and we know that memory

is, over time, neither of those things. This is a problem because it means that

the data collected fromparticipants is neither valid or reliable.

Supporting

research

Despite the criticisms

of the research, a strength of the research is that it is now largely accepted

that they are a better predictor of later health/ill health than life events

and this is supported by research. For example; Flett et al found that major

life-changing events may differ from daily hassles in the extent to which a

person would seek social support.320 students read a scenario describing an

individual who had experienced either a life-event or a daily hassle. They then

rated the support that person would receive and would seek from others. Those who

had experience a life event were rated as needing and receiving more social

support. This presumably means that one reason why daily hassles are such a

negative influence on later health is that we don’t receive adequate social

support to deal with them.