Presumptive stressful life event scale

Presumptive stressful life event scale Dear Sir, in different demographic and clinical categories, which has not been attempted. I have read with considerable interest the article entitled, Presumptive stressful life events scale (PSLES)-a new stressful life events scale for use in India by Gurmeet Singh et al (April 1984 issue). I think it is a commendable effort to develop such a scale which would potentially be of use in our setting. However, the research raises several questions, which have not been dealt with in the' paper. The following are the questions or comments which ask for response from the authors: a) The mode of selection of 51 items is not mentioned. If taken arbitrarily they could suggest a bias. If selected from clinical experience, there could be a likelihood of certain events being missed. An ideal way would be to record various events from a number of persons (and patients) and then prepare a list of commonly occuring events. b) It is noteworthy that certain culture specific items as dowry, birth of daughter, etc. are included. Other relevant events as conflict with in-laws (not regarding dowry), refusal by match seeking team (difficulty in finding match for marriage) and lack of son, could be considered stressful in our setting. c) Total number of life events are a function of age, as has been mentioned in the review of literature also, hence age categorisation as under 35 and over 35 might neither be proper nor sufficient. The relationship of number of life events in different age groups would be interesting to note. d) Also, more interesting would be to examine the rank order of life events e) A briefened version would be more welcome. The authors should try to evolve a version of around about 25-30 items, which could be easily applied clinically or for research purposes. As can be seen, from items after serial number 30 (Table 4) many could be excluded. f) The cause and effect relationship is difficult to comment from the results given by the scale. As is known, 'stressfulness' of the event depends on an individuals perception of the event. That persons with higher neu-roticism scores report more events could partly be due to this. g) A minor point, Table 4 mentions Standard Deviations however S. D. has not been given for any item. Reply: I am grateful for the interest shown by Dr. Chaturvedi and his …