Based on prior research on stress and health, our assessment of stressors utilized multiple stressors, adapted from some of the best available measures, in each of eight domains (acute life events, employment, financial, life discrimination, job discrimination, relationship, early life, and community stressors) that reflect key arenas in which people operate (e.g., home, job, neighborhood) and the major roles/statuses they assume (Lantz et al., 2005; Pearlin 1989). Before fielding the CCAHS survey, a large pretest was conducted with various psychosocial instruments (including stressors) in suburban Chicago to develop shorter versions of existing scales that maintained good psychometric properties. Although some of the specific stress measures are short, our assessment reflects an effort to provide broad coverage of the critical stressors that appear to matter for health given that the failure to measure stressors comprehensively understates the association between stressors and health (Thoits 2010).
