The inventory of high-school students' recent life experiences: A decontaminated measure of adolescents' hassles

A new decontaminated hassles measure for adolescents, the Inventory of High-School Students' Recent Life Experiences (IHSSRLE), was validated. A pool of 49 items was administered to 99 high-school students along with the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS). Forty-one items were selected for the final form of the IHSSRLE, based on significant positive correlations with the PSS. The alpha reliability of the IHSSRLE was .91, and its correlation against the PSS was .68, p<.01. To guard against capitalization on chance, the same scales were administered to an independent sample of 77 high-school students. The alpha reliability of the IHSSRLE in the new sample was .90 and its correlation against the PSS was .63, p<.01. Factor analysis of the measure yielded eight factors. Intercorrelations among factor-based subscales were sufficiently low to suggest that the IHSSRLE is relatively free from contamination by psychological distress.Received a Ph.D. degree in social psychology from Harvard University. Research interests include personality factors in vulnerability to the adverse effects of stress, and causal factors in drug and alcohol abuse.Received an Honors B.A. in psychology, and a B.Ed, from York University. Main research interests are adolescent stress, and adolescent drug and alcohol use.