research demonstrating viability of long-term prospective measurement of stressful experience

1. Does a retrospective lifetime measure of major events have a half-life? Don Lloyd Florida State University The Eleventh International Conference on Social Stress Research Santa Fe, NM May 31-June 2 2008

2. Prospective measurement is best Continuous collection is the ideal Often must resort to retrospective measures We frequently rely on ability to recall events is decay a problem?

3. Half-life... amount of time for half the atoms to decay increasingly harder to detect in a sample is distal stress less “detectable”?

4. Evidence on recall accuracy... wide variation in long-term recall varies with salience varies with desirability varies with time

5. Methods to enhance recall... cues context temporal framework Life History Calendar standardized checklist

6. Assume a given set of events... occur at similar rate over time if recall is perfect in a diverse population (may be perturbed by historic events) failure to recall distal events shows as fall-off

7. To be considered: precision vs stability which occurrences to count age cohort differences variation across event domains

8. Method: ~2000 community residents aged 18-93 interview checklist of 41 lifetime events: 11 nonviolent (parents divorced, orphaned) 17 violent experience (major car crash, rape) 8 witnessed violence (saw mother beaten) 5 received bad news (friend suicide, rape) number of occurrences, age at first and last times