Assessment Recall of Threat and Submissiveness in Childhood: Development of a New Scale and its Relationship with Depression, Social Comparison and Shame

Research on the link between recall of early parenting and psychopathology has focused on recall of parental behaviours such as neglect, rejection, low warmth and overprotection. This study investigates recall of the personal feelings of perceived threat and subordination in childhood. A short, new self-report scale was developed, called the Early Life Experiences Scale (ELES) and given to 225 undergraduate students. Analysis revealed three factors: a factor for threat, a factor related to submissiveness and a factor related to feeling (un)valued. All participants completed measures of recall of parental behaviour and depression; 119 also completed a shame scale, and 106 completed a social comparison scale. Both the recall of parental behaviour measure and the ELES correlated significantly with depression, social comparison and shame. However, a standard multiple regression analysis found that only the submissive factor of the ELES predicted depression. Copyright  2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.