The Value of Interviewing Family and Friends in Assessing Life Stressors

A qualitative exploration of the experiences of young people and their parents regarding the impact of missing school to attend hospital-based orthodontic appointments

“…Additionally, parents and young people were interviewed together, and their responses may have been different if they had been interviewed separately, this may particularly apply to the young person's responses. However, Schless and Mendels (1978) identified that by pairing participants, greater amounts of information could be elicited, and this was also seen in this study, when the presence of an additional participant enhanced recall in some interviews. Interviewing in pairs was also convenient for the participants as only a single interview time was required, and this is clearly important when considering the ethical aspects of research.…”

Life stress and adjustment: Effects of life events experienced by young adolescents and their parents.

“…The adolescents reported a total of 122 life events (at initial testing), and 82 (67%) of these events were confirmed by their mothers. The mothers reported a total of 115 JHLES events, and 82 (71%) of these were confirmed by their adolescents.These validity percentages are comparable with agreement rates obtained in interview studies of patients and companions (Brown & Harris, 1979: 79%; Schless & Mendels, 1978: 57%) and are superior to those obtained in a questionnaire study of college students and their friends (Lakey & Heller, 1985: 25–26%). Mother-child agreement on the JHLES is impressive, because mothers would not be expected to be aware of a number of their adolescents' life events (e.g., drug and alcohol use, peer relations).…”

“…These validity percentages are comparable with agreement rates obtained in interview studies of patients and companions (Brown & Harris, 1979: 79%; Schless & Mendels, 1978: 57%) and are superior to those obtained in a questionnaire study of college students and their friends (Lakey & Heller, 1985: 25–26%). Mother-child agreement on the JHLES is impressive, because mothers would not be expected to be aware of a number of their adolescents' life events (e.g., drug and alcohol use, peer relations).…”

Response biases and the relation between negative life events and psychological symptoms.

“…Note the low rate of agreement (25-26%) found in this study between subjects and significant others on the life event questionnaires. This agreement rate contrasts with agreement rates of 57% (Hudgens et al, 1970;Schless & Mendels, 1978) and 79% (Brown & Harris, 1979) that were obtained with patient samples through the use of life events interview schedules. Although the better agreement between subjects and com-panions demonstrated by Hudgens et al (1970), Schless and Mendels (1978), and Brown and Harris (1979) might indicate better reliability for their more intensive method, sampling differences actually might be responsible for their higher agreement rates.…”

“…This agreement rate contrasts with agreement rates of 57% (Hudgens et al, 1970;Schless & Mendels, 1978) and 79% (Brown & Harris, 1979) that were obtained with patient samples through the use of life events interview schedules. Although the better agreement between subjects and com-panions demonstrated by Hudgens et al (1970), Schless and Mendels (1978), and Brown and Harris (1979) might indicate better reliability for their more intensive method, sampling differences actually might be responsible for their higher agreement rates. For example, subjects in their studies might know one another longer and more intimately than did the friends who were subjects in this study.…”