A Comparison of Life-Event-Weighting Schemes: Change, Undesirability, and Effect-Proportional Indices

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Abstract
This study systematically compares 23 different methods of weighting life events in terms of how well they predict psychiatric symptomatology. Sixteen of the weighting schemes have been developed by previous researchers. With these, we determine that: (1) the most predictive and efficient undesirability index consists of simply adding up the undesirable events; (2) a new readjustment score developed by Hough et al. (1976) predicts symptomatology no better than the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (Holmes and Rahe, 1967); and (3) the best undesirability score predicts symptomatology better than change scores. Multivariate regression shows that when undesirability is controlled, the effects of desirable and ambiguous events, change, and number of events disappear. A new method for weighting life events based on the objective response (effect-proportional coding) is introduced as a measure of stressfulness.

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