Identify two main categories of methods researchers use for measuring stress. Identify and summarize specific examples of both types.

A. Physiological measures are one of two main categories of approaches for measuring stress.
1. Physiological measures evaluate components of the body's physical stress response directly. These include heart rate, blood pressure, respiration rate, galvanic skin response, and elevated secretion of cortisol, epinephrine, and other stress hormones. These data give researchers a glimpse into HPA axis and sympathetic nervous system activation.
2. Measuring epinephrine and norepinephrine hormone secretions in urine or blood samples can indicate stress immediately following stressful experiences.
3. Cortisol in saliva can be measured for up to 20 minutes after stressful events.
4. Measuring cortisol in human hair indicates the body's past six months of cortisol production to indicate stress over a longer recent time period.
5. Advantages: Physiological measures of stress are easy to quantify, highly reliable, and direct. Disadvantages: Electrical and mechanical hardware and clinical settings used for physiological measurement can cause stress themselves.
6. Due to the disadvantages of physiological measurement, self-reports are more commonly used.
B. Self-report measures are the other main category of approaches for measuring stress.
1. Life Events Scales have been developed since the late 1950s-early 1960s as self-report instruments. The best known and earliest of these is Holmes and Rahe's Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS, 1967).
a. The SRRS lists 43 life events ranked from most to least stressful, each assigned a value from 100 to 11 points.
b. Respondents check items they experienced recently, e.g. the last 6-24 months.
c. Totaling point values yields a stress score for each respondent.
d. Stress scores can be correlated with future illness incidence to determine the relationship between these.
2. Additional stress inventories include the Life Events Scale for Students. College students who mark more stressful situations on the scale are likely to use more health services.
3. Cohen, Kamarck, and Mermelstein's Perceived Stress Scale (PSS, 1983) does not emphasize actual stressful events, but rather people's perceptions of them.
a. The PSS has 14 items, which respondents rate as "unpredictable, uncontrollable, and overloading" in the last month.
b. The PSS evaluates three stress components:
(1) daily hassles;
(2) major events;
(3) changes in coping resources.
c. Researchers use the PSS for measuring prenatal stress in pregnant women, evaluating how effective a relaxation program is for elementary school teachers, and predicting burnout in college athletic coaches.
d. Researchers have used the PSS in a variety of projects, owing to its good validity, reliability, and shortness.
4. Everyday Hassles Scales were pioneered by Richard Lazarus and colleagues.
a. These are based on Lazarus's theory of stress as a dynamic, transactional complex, influenced by people's appraisal of environmental situations and their perceived capabilities to cope with those situations.
b. Lazarus and colleagues require these self-report scales be able to evaluate personal beliefs, goals, commitments, appraisal, and other subjective elements.
c. The original Hassles Scale correlates only somewhat with life events, suggesting these are different types of stress.
d. The Hassles Scale can predict psychological health more accurately than life events scales.
e. A shorter version of the Hassles Scale predicts headache frequency and intensity and IBD episodes better than the SRRS, showing that everyday annoyances can influence health more than more serious life events.
f. The Urban Hassles Index (Miller & Townsend, 2005) measures stressors for urban adolescents.
g. The Family Daily Hassles Inventory (Rollins & Garrison, 2002) measures daily stressors for parents.