Life event reports by psychiatric patients, nonpatients, and their partners
J. Yager, I. Grant, H. L. Sweetwood and M. Gerst
The Schedule of Recent Experience (SRE) was completed for three separate
two-month periods by groups of male psychiatric patients, male nonpatients,
and their partners (primarily spouses). Each partner completed the SRE for
life events believed to have occurred to the index person. For both patient
and nonpatient pairs, perfect agreement was reported for only about one
third of the responses where at least one pair member reported an
occurrence. With disagreements, index persons were little more likely than
their partners to report that an event occurred. Agreement was higher for
clearly worded than for vaguely worded items in both patient and nonpatient
groups. Among nonpatient pairs only, agreement was higher for events that
would be difficult to hide from a partner than for those that could be kept
hidden. Agreement for undesirable events for either group.
