10.98. Lynall M-E — IAM study — life events

Warning

(¶+) Reproduction of this task/scale is not permitted (or such permission is not clear). This CamCOPS task is a data collection tool only, with no scale text (unless configured locally to use externally provided text that the hosting institution is legally permitted to use). Use it only in conjunction with a licensed copy of the original task. If your institution is entitled to use the task, you may install an add-on XML file on your server containing the required strings, to make the task fully functional, but you must provide this XML file and its contents yourself (it is outside the scope of CamCOPS).

Life events questionnaire for the Inflammation in Mind (IAM) study.

A bespoke scale that is a version of the Brugha life events questionnaire, modified to include cumulative adult as well as recent stress.

10.98.1. Intellectual property rights

  • Based on the List of Threatening Experiences (LTE) and modified from this.

    The LTE is owned and copyrighted jointly by Prof. Terry (Traolach) Brugha and the Medical Research Council (MRC).

    “I have no objection to you using the LTE in your research non commercially. There is no need to ask the MRC for this permission.

    In principle I favour the non commercial use of the LTE by other researchers and only ask that they cite it in any dissemination.”

    [Commercial use may require a contract with the MRC, setup of which the MRC have subcontracted to an agency.]

    – Personal communication, Prof. Terry (Traolach) Brugha (University of Leicester) to Mary-Ellen Lynall, 2019-09-12.

    Accordingly,

    • noncommercial restriction applied in CamCOPS;

    • skeleton task plus local upgrade for now.

  • Modifications by Mary-Ellen Lynall, University of Cambridge, 2019. Any new material: copyright © 2019 Mary-Ellen Lynall. License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

10.98.2. History

  • List of Threatening Experiences:

    • Brugha T, Bebbington P, Tennant C, Hurry J (1985). The List of Threatening Experiences: a subset of 12 life event categories with considerable long-term contextual threat. Psychological Medicine 15: 189-194. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3991833

    • Brugha TS, Cragg D (1990). The List of Threatening Experiences: the reliability and validity of a brief life events questionnaire. Acta Psychiatr Scand. 82: 77-81. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2399824

      Defines the LTE-Q, the questionnaire version of the life events instrument, consisting (as before) of 12 categories of common life events that are highly likely to be threatening. No definitive scoring system is described.

  • See also:

    • Rosmalen JGM, Bos EH, de Jonge P (2012). Validation of the Long-Term Difficulties Inventory (LDI) and the List of Threatening Experiences (LTE) as measures of stress in epidemiological population-based cohort studies. Psychological Medicine 42: 2599–2608. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22490940

      Uses a scoring system of “the total number of items endorsed” (out of 12).

10.98.3. Source

  • Mary-Ellen Lynall, personal communication to Rudolf Cardinal (e.g. 2019-04-30).

  • The IAM/Life Events version asks occurrence within the last 6 months; then about severity of index event and frequency (since age 18) for each category of event endorsed.

  • The differences in categories from the LTE are:

    LTE-Q category

    IAM/Life Events category

    1: Illness/injury/assault (self)

    [1: same]

    2: Illness/injury/assault (relative)

    [2: same]

    3: Parent/child/spouse died

    [3: same except includes siblings]

    4: Close family friend/other relative died

    [4: same, given 3]

    5: Marital separation

    5: marital separation or broke off relationship

    6: Broke off a steady relationship

    [incorporated into 5]

    –

    6: ended long-lasting friendship with close friend/relative

    7: Problems with close friend/neighbour/relative

    [7: same]

    8: Unemployment or unsuccessful job-seeking 1mo+

    8: unsuccessful job-seeking 1mo+

    9: Sacked

    [9: same: sacked/made redundant]

    10: Financial crisis

    [10: same]

    11: Police with court appearance

    [11: same]

    12: Something lost/stolen

    [12: same]

    –

    13: Self/partner gave birth

    –

    14: Other

    Note: in the draft IAM/Life (prior to 2019-09-15), 8 was “sacked” and 9 was “unsuccessful job-seeking”; transposed on 2019-09-15 for better consistency with original LTE-Q.