Barbara Snell Dohrenwend

Social stress and community psychology.

Two questions that embarrass community psychologists are: What do community psychologists do? Whats the difference between community psychology and clinical psychology? A conceptual model is proposed to help to find answers to these questions. The model describes a process whereby psychosocial stress leads to psychopathology. The argument is developed that the apparently disparate activities of community psychologists are uniformly directed at undermining the stress process but, given the complexity of this process, vary because they tackle it at different points.

SOCIAL DISTANCE AND INTERVIEWER EFFECTS

What kind of relationship between interviewer and respondent minimizes interviewer biasing effects? To answer this question, a model has been developed in terms of social distance between interviewer and respondent. That is, the model focuses on the question: Which types of interviewers bias which types of respondents? With respect to the problem of the direction of bias, respondents are assumed most likely to make their answers conform with what they believe to be the norms and expectations of the interviewer.

Anticipation and Control of Stressful Life Events: An Exploratory Analysis

The most difficult problem to be solved before we can thoroughly understand the effects of stressful life events is the basis for the large individual differences observed in reactions to these events. In general, we can look for explanation to two sources of variability. The first is individual predispositions and vulnerabilities. The second source of variability is the objective situation or context in which the stressful event or stimulus is experienced. Ironically, this source of variability has largely been ignored by investigators concerned with stressful life events while being the focus of almost all experimental research on stress in the laboratory.

The Conceptualization and Measurement of Stressful Life Events: An Overview of the Issues

Studies of the effects of natural and man-made disasters —especially the disaster of war—have provided the most unequivocal evidence for the proposition that stressful events can produce psychopathology in previously normal personalities (cf. Arthur, 1974; Cooper & Shepherd, 1970; Kinson & Rosser, 1974; Hocking, 1970). For example, when a systematic sample of the population in a rural section of Arkansas was interviewed shortly after the area was hit by a severe tornado, 90 per cent reported “…some form of acute emotional, physiological or psychosomatic after-effect” (Fritz & Marks, 1954, p. 34). Similarly, pervasive effects were implied by Star’s (1949) finding, based on a series of studies during World War II using subscales from the Neuropsychiatric Screening Adjunct, that “…the fear and anxiety implicit in combat brought forth psychosomatic manifestations in so many men that these (symptom scales) served less and less to discriminate between men who were labeled psychiatric casualties and those who were not” (p. 455).

AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF DIRECTIVE INTERVIEWING

Questions in which the interviewer indicates what answer he expects from the respondent, in part or in whole, are generally avoided in research interviewing. The widespread rejection of this technique can be traced to studies by William Stern and his colleagues showing that such questions strongly bias respondents answers. Even though a limiting condition on this biasing was suggested by Cantrils finding that . . . where opinion was well crystallized, biasing statements had relatively little effect on the results,2 the caveat against directive3 questions has generally been accepted without qualification by professional users of the research interview. The striking exception to this rule is the use by Kinsey and his colleagues of questions that would 6.6. . not make it easy for a subject to deny his participation in any form of sexual activity. It is too easy to say no if he is simply asked whether he has ever engaged in a particular activity ... We always begin by asking when they first engaged in such activity.4 The rationale for this procedure was that, by conveying the interviewers acceptance of illicit or taboo behavior, it served to counteract the social norms against reporting such behavior. Nevertheless, many critics have argued that, particularly among more suggestible respondents at lower levels of intelligence or education, this directive technique may well have led to overreporting of sexual activities, rather than simply to reporting of the socially unpopular truth.5