Everyday Problems and Life Change Events: Ongoing versus Acute Sources of Stress

Research on the relationship between life stress and illness has focused largely on stress caused by change. The present study examines a relatively neglected source of stress: everyday problems, defined as ongoing, often chronic situations, which are stressful for a substantial period of time. An inventory of everyday problems was developed, designed to minimize as much as possible potential confounds present in earlier work. It was administered to 281 undergraduate women along with a life events inventory, the Hopkins Symptom Checklist, and a social support scale, which measured family and nonfamily sources of support. Stepwise regression analyses indicated that everyday problems were more effective than life events in predicting psychological symptoms. Everyday problems were significant predictors of symptoms even after statistically controlling for life events, whereas life events had no predictive ability beyond that attributed to everyday problems. In addition, a significant interaction between everyday problems and life events was found. Multiple regression analyses also showed an interaction between everyday problems and nonfamily social support, as predicted by the buffering hypothesis. Within the methodological limitations of this study, these findings are interpreted as supporting the importance of everyday problems as a significant source of stress.