The evaluation of life event data

Data from three life event studies are compared. The interviews covered events that occured within a period of 2 years before interview. The same inventory was used in each of the studies. Samples were drawn from depressives, myocardial infarction patients and an industrial worker population. The patient groups were interviewed twice within 4 weeks. Fewer than 50% of the total number of events reported in the retests were recorded twice. For events reported in both interviews the corelations of subjective appraisals were only moderate. There is considerable fall-off for reports of events occuring more than 6 months before interview. It was expected that the severest events would have the lowest, and the least severe ones the highest frequencies. Instead, inappropriate labels of the rating scales led to clusterings of severity ratings at their extreme points. Numbers of events and severity ratings were positively correlated with measures of depression.