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State the mean scores that you obtained and discuss, with reasoning, whether there was a significant difference in stress scores between those who have had a cent illness and those who have not. (2 marks) The mean score obtained from SIRS for Group 1 (those who visited a medical professional ) was 235. 17. The mean score obtained from SIRS for Group 2 (those who didn’t visit a medical professional) was 193. 86. The difference between the means of the two groups is 41. 31 (235. 17-193. 86 = 41. 31). Despite this slight difference the P value of . 33 is non- significant at the 0. 05 level of significance. This means the difference between the mean values of Group 1 and Group 2 is small enough, that could the difference could be due to chance e. . Variability in sampling. Therefore no significant difference can be found between those who have had recent illness and those who have not. 3. Outline two problems with the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SIRS) and give specific examples from the list of 42 items to back up your answer. (2 marks) The SIRS is quite specific.
Questions therefore may not be relevant to an individual, experiencing high levels of stress. It is would be difficult to include all stressful life events in the questionnaire, thus SIRS cannot always produce results representative of individual ‘stress’ levels. Stress can occur from day to day situations rather than major life events which SIRS fails to reflect E. G. 35- Major change in church activities (e. G. A lot more ore a lot less than usual). This is a very specific instance which will only apply to those of a Christian faith and even narrower still, those experiencing “Major”change.
What if the event causing a person’s stress was related to a change in religious activities, but not unnecessarily religious activity with a Christian basis? A Sikh could still experience a major change in religious activities, but because they didn’t occur at a church, will to be included. The SIRS also fails to recognizes that different events/ instances will effect individuals in different ways. What is stressful for one person may not be for another, and the amount of ‘stress’ experienced will differ,person to person and depending on the situation. E. G. 5- Outstanding personal achievement. For one person this instance may not cause any added ‘stress’ for another they might feel people will not expect more from them , pushing themselves and generating more stress. 4. What is the most likely reason why there was, or was not, a difference in tress scores between those who had been ill and those who had not, and how do your findings relate to Kyle’s theories? Our findings disagree with Sexless findings in that there was no significant difference found in the stress levels of those who have been ill and those who have not been ill.
Kyle’s work, proving a relationship between animal’s adapted responses of prolonged physiological arousal leading to illness, could was not replicated in our particular study . Due to modern enforcement of ethics the ‘stress’, illness relationship in humans must be observed rather than tested. Our findings technically disagree with Sleep’s findings (we were unable to prove a significant relationship between illness and ‘stress’), but It may still be possible to infer a relationship between ‘stress’ and illness given the limitations of our experiment.
Illness was defined for this investigation as visiting or not visiting a Doctor. It is possible people suffered illness as a result of stress but did not go to the Dry. E. G. Illness could have affected mental health rather than physical, thus requiring the support of a psychologist rather than a Dry, or it could have caused common cold that didn’t require medical attention. 5. How, and why, did your ratings on the USSR differ from the ratings on the SIRS ratings obtained by Holmes and Rare? Give specific examples.
My USSR ratings largely differed from the SIRS ratings. E. G. I rated Major personal injury or illness as a 70, SIRS rated it as a 53. Using marriage to gage the level of social readjustment required, I considered Major personal injury or illness as creating a lot more social readjustment than marriage. My ideas of marriage come from a different social context than the one in which the SIRS created. I would expect people to live together before marriage with the event of marriage creating little social adjustment.
In 1967 Marriage often involved moving out of home (often for the first time) and living with someone, whose living habits you know nothing about. It was not just a wedding ceremony then continuing with life largely as normal. This could explain only having a small difference in rating a to a major personal Illness USSR procedure stated you must use “all of your experience” in rating an event. They defined this as “personal experience” and what you have “learned from others” . Experience’ is influenced by numerous factors; social and political era, gender, age, ethnicity etc.
The SIRS was created in 1967, based on a study of young Navy personnel and their experiences (psych text book). This could help explain my rating they way my SIRS ratings differed e. Wife beginning work outside the home as a 5 as opposed to 24 on SIRS. As young female living in 201 1 my experience (personal and learned), used to complete USSR will be completely different to those on which the scale was first based. This ultimately responsible for the differences in my ratings on the USSR events to those obtained by Holmes and Rare. 6.
Imagine that you are a health psychologist and you want to investigate the effects of stress on the survival rate of cancer patients. Given what you have learned in this laboratory, briefly describe how you would measure stress? You could conduct SIRS evaluations on a number of patients suffering from the same form of cancer e. G. Women suffering from Brest cancer. If you involved a group of women of similar age and background and conducted an observational study these on these patients throughout their illness,you could investigate the legislation between their score on the SIRS and their survival rate.