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.