Assessing Life Stressors and Social Resources among Adolescents

A growing body of evidence points to the importance of life stressors and social resources in adolescent functioning. This article describes the Life Stressors and Social Resources Inventory-Youth Form (LISRES-Y), which provides an integrated assessment of life stressors and social resources in eight domains: physical health, home/money, parent, sibling, extended family, school, friend, and boy/girlfriend. The indices were developed on data obtained from four groups of youth: depressed youth, youth with conduct disorder, youth with rheumatic disease, and healthy youth. As expected, depressed youth reported more acute and chronic stressors and fewer social resources than did healthy youth. In addition, the indices were predictably associated with individual differences in depressed mood, anxiety, behavior problems, and self-confidence. Negative life events, ongoing stressors in different domains, and stable social resources all contributed unique variance to the functioning criteria. The findings point to the value of an integrated measure of adolescent life context.