The Adolescent Perceived Events Scale as a predictor of stress-related illness

Abstract

While the presence of a relationship between stress and illness is generally accepted with adults, this relationship has not been widely studied with children and adolescents. One difficulty in conducting stress-illness research with children and adolescents is the lack of stressor measures validated for this purpose. The Adolescent Perceived Events Scale (APES) (Compas, Davis, Forsythe, & Wagner, 1987) is a measure of stressors empirically developed for use with 18-20 year-olds. This dissertation examines the validity of the APES as a measure of stressors to predict illness over 1 week and 8 week periods. Seventy-two undergraduate students between the ages of 18-20 years completed the questionnaires in return for class credit. Three assessments of each subject were obtained over an 8-week period: One at the beginning of the semester and again 7 and 8 weeks later. In addition, data were collected on depression, social support, coping, and illness, and hypothesized models of the mediating effects of these variables in the relationship between stress and illness were tested. The results suggest that the APES, especially when scored for negative stressors, is useful in predicting illness over short and longer time periods. Further, the hypothesis that social support, coping, and depression mediate the stress-illness relationship is supported in the presence of large numbers of stressors (at the beginning of the semester), but not with lower levels of stress (weeks seven and eight). Coping, social support, and depression emerged as directly predictive of stress in the high stress condition. The implications of this study and future research are discussed.