Measuring stress in children : the development of the Children's life situation scale

The purpose of the present study was to continue the development of the Children's Life Situation Scale, in an attempt to create a scale which answered some of the methodological and statistical problems with existing scales and to establish psychometric evidence for its use. The participants were 210 fifth, sixth and seventh graders. Respondents were primarily from the middle class with approximately equal numbers of males (n=105) and females (n=106).The following research questions were addressed: 1. How well do individual items relate to a central concept and what is the internal consistency of the scale?2. What is the internal factor structure of the scale? 3. What is the criterion related validity of the scale in relation to the Behavior Assessment System for Children (BASC; Reynolds & Kamphaus, 1992)? 4. Do positive events affect outcome measures in a different way than do negatively stressful events?Results of reliability analysis suggested that the scale was highly internally consistent, and that all items equally related to the central concept of stress. However, Principal Axis Factoring revealed two factors which were conceptualized as "Life Events," and "Daily Hassles." When the total stress score as well as individual factor scores were correlated with the BASC, they were found to correlate significantly with all subscales, with the strongest correlations involving scales of an internalizing nature such as depression. The "Daily Hassles" factor was found to correlate most strongly with students' reports of psychological distress. Not only do the results support the use of the present scale as a reliable and valid measure of stress in children, results support the conceptualization of stress as involving two components, both "Life Events" and "Daily Hassles."Department of Educational PsychologyThesis (Ph. D.