This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Retrospective vs Concurrent Strategies

Scott M. Monroe, PhD

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1982;39(5):606-610.

Abstract
• The relationship of life events to different disorders continues to be of great interest. Most communications, however, have been based on self-report data gathered retrospectively over lengthy intervals (eg, one to ten years). While recent studies have attempted to ascertain the degree of distortion associated with such procedures, none has provided an appropriate basis for estimating absolute decrements of event reporting over time. This study compares the traditional retrospective procedure with a concurrent assessment procedure covering shorter recall periods (one month). The findings indicate as much as 60% of events may be underreported for even the most recent fourmonth retrospective period. Additionally, particular types of events (eg, desirable events) may be relatively more susceptible to such reporting distortion. Implications of these results for life events assessment and conceptualizations of event-disorder associations are discussed.

Author Affiliations
From the Clinical Psychology Center, Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh.

Footnotes
Accepted for publication Nov 2, 1981.

Reprint requests to Clinical Psychology Center, Department of Psychology, 4015 O'Hara St, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260 (Dr Monroe).

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

The Social Environment and Psychopathology
Monroe
Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 1988;5:347-366.
ABSTRACT