The contextual threat of life events: the concept and its reliability

Abstract

SynopsisThe reliability of Brown's contextual measure of threat is assessed and found to be highly satisfactory. Previously inexperienced raters achieve highly reliable ratings after only brief training. The implications for the concept of the threat of life events are discussed.

Stressful Life Events and Social Rhythm Disruption in the Onset of Manic and Depressive Bipolar Episodes

“…High interrater agreement of the occurrence, severity, and dating of life events has been repeatedly demonstrated, as has high interrespondent agreement when a subject and close relative have been interviewed independently by different interviewers. 22,41,42 High interrater reliability has also been demonstrated in our own research group with other mood disorder samples ( = 0.86). Finally, numerous studies have pointed to the association between LEDS-defined life events and onset of a wide range of illnesses.…”

Somatization an independent psychosocial risk factor for irritable bowel syndrome but not dyspepsia: a population-based study

“…The Life Events Difficulties Schedule [34] is a valid and reliable structured interview that was used in this study to elicit information about acute life events (over the past year) and chronic difficulties (defined as lasting more than 6 months) [35]. Additional information regarding life events was also obtained including their onset, duration and the degree of short-term (defined as that implied on the day of the event or soon afterwards) and long-term threat (implied about 1 week after the occurrence of the event) associated with the event.…”

Children’s Social Representations in Dolls’ House Play and Theory of Mind Tasks, and their Relation to Family Adversity and Child Disturbance

“…This information was obtained in the context of the Life Events and Difficulties Interview (LEDS, Brown & Harris, 1978), using additional probes. This interview is of well established reliability and validity (Tennant, Smith, Bebbington, & Hurry, 1979;Parry, Shapiro, & Davies, 1981). Together with the LEDS rating of the severity of any problem, the interview was used to define the presence or absence of any parental conflict occurring within the preceding twelve months that implicated the child in any of the ways described above.…”