1. Measurement of Chronic Stress
- Author
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Sarah M. Thompson, Elizabeth D. Dalton, and Constance Hammen
- Subjects
Social stress ,Stress management ,Assessment methods ,Stress (linguistics) ,Information processing ,Cognition ,Chronic stress ,Affect (psychology) ,Psychology ,Clinical psychology - Abstract
Chronic stress refers to the perceived and actual negative life conditions that affect a person on a daily or continuing basis, and is found to predict a wide array of debilitating emotional and behavioral states; physiological and medical changes;and neurobiological changes in development, cognition, memory, and information processing. Measures of chronic stress have been developed to cover both perceived and actual experiences, primarily focused on specific domains (e.g., financial concerns, marital or caregiving relationships, discrimination), or on general experiences across multiple roles affecting daily life (e.g., work, marriage, parenting, health).Thisentry describes more commonly used specific or general measures of chronic stress, and discusses psychometric properties of diverse questionnaire and interview assessments.Further study is needed on improving assessment methods, the nature of the content and aspects of chronic stress that are particularly harmful, and biological mechanisms associated with exposure to chronic stress. Keywords: measurement in psychology; psychology of stress; chronic strain; chronic stress; ongoing difficulties; perceived stress; stress
- Published
- 2015
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