A third strategy involves subjective ratings by the respondent of the severity and negative impact of the stressful experience (Cohen et al. 2007). In the PTSD literature, respondents are often asked after reporting a particular event to indicate how much they had been affected by it and how upset they had been by it (Carter 2007). Similarly, a study relating caregiver stress to mortality had respondents indicate “how much of a mental or emotional strain” each reported caregiving task had been (Schulz and Beach 1999). A recent measure of hurricane-related stressors required respondents to provide a global rating of the 29 stressors ascertained by indicating “how stressful overall” the experiences had been on a 0–10 scale, “where 0 means not at all stressful and 10 means the most stressful thing you can imagine” (Kessler et al. 2008). The researchers then compared respondents rating their stress as severe (9–10), serious (7–8), moderate (5–6) or mild (3–4) to those who did not rate it as stressful (0–2). Such approaches lead to stronger associations between life events and mental health in the general
