TAMAÑO Y VELOCIDAD DEL TORNILLO SINFÍN

n) changes in parents’ work (changing jobs, retirement, redundancy, promotion, etc)

o) changes in subject’s work: as above

p) changes in living arrangements: subject, close family q) housing, neighbourhood problems

r) money problems

s) other crises or emergencies affecting subject

t) subject being responsible for breaking bad news to others u) contact with police or judiciary: subject, close family or

subject’s close friends v) family rows, violence

w) troubles of subject’s closest friends, boyfriends(s) x) problems among family pets

y) subject’s experience of unexpected events

These issues also emerged in other sections of the interview. It has already been emphasised (Chapter 6) that events and difficulties were carefully dated and dates were double-checked in the last half-hour of the intensive interview in which mothers

and daughters were brought together to discuss the girl’s events and difficulties.

At the coding stage, verbatim accounts of each event and difficulty were transferred from the audiotapes of the interviews onto separate rating sheets. Rating methods followed those used by the Bedford MRC Unit. Each life event and difficulty reported by the girl’s and mother’s were rated by the relevant interviewers using the LEDS-1 "Dictionary of events and difficulties" and the teenage amendments to provide parallel cases as "anchors". These ratings (see below for a description of the classifications) were then discussed by all three second stage interviewers (the author, EM and RD and EN). Consensus ratings were entered in the data base.

a) Inclusion and exclusion: new rules for adolescents

Events and difficulties were initially assessed for inclusion or exclusion and classified into groups, and then rated on three attributes: severity of ’contextual threat’, ’focus’ and ’independence’.

The system used for rating events and difficulties in adult studies was adapted for use with adolescent girls in a series of meetings with one of the senior LEDS trainer, who was also one of the original authors*. The new categories used to classify adult events were extended to include more ’first’ events, and some events which it was judged would have higher salience for adolescents than for adults. The Teenage Supplement to the original classification (to which the present author contributed) provides examples with special significance for teenagers, leading in certain circumstances to lower thresholds for inclusion as an ’event’ and higher (occasionally lower) ratings of contextual severity (see below - rating systems). The decision to lower the thresholds for inclusion arose in part from the sense of the potential psychosocial vulnerability of the age-group. As the introduction to the LEDS Teenage Supplement expresses it:

"(inclusion rules) for the adult LEDS were largely derived from the common sense judgments of investigators belonging by and

large to the same age-group as the respondents. In rating the events for teenagers, especially the youngest of them, we do not have the same degree of confidence, and believe it therefore appropriate to lower the inclusion rules for events that might be

important.” p. 2 Harris et al (1992)

Six reasons were adduced in broadening the criteria for inclusion of certain categories of events and difficulties for teenagers^.

* Category 1. Age restricted. These events almost exclusively occur only to teenagers and would not have appeared in the classification system for adults (LEDS-1);

* Category 2. Inexperience. These would include events or difficulties which teenagers will seldom if ever have experienced

* Category 3. Sensitivity to judgments: teenagers have had less chance to be de-sensitized to the ’slings and arrows’ and through this establish a more secure sense of self;

* Category 4. Undeveloped social networks: typically the teenager’s social network has not developed to the adult level, and the teenagers are therefore more dependent on family and parents than older people are. Incidents affecting such ties have a greater impact, because there is less freedom to move away into new networks; or develop existing networks, the sub-groups are categorised as (4a) Importance of siblings, (4b) Dependence on parents and (4c) Restricted social network.

* Category 5. Lack of control: typically teenagers have less power to influence events, because of their legal status as minors or dependent status within the family;

* Category 6. Filtering: ratings here are affected because the impact of the event is ’filtered’ by others (usually adults/parents); the teenager is protected from the full range of information about the event, in a way not true for

^ These ’categories’ o f inclusion are now numbered 1-6 in the Teenage Supplement to the LEDS (LEDS - 2); the category rating o f 0 indicates that there is no difference in the inclusion o f the event from the LEDS - 1, in other w ords, the event or difficulty would be included even if the Subject was not a teenager.

adults.

Lowering the inclusion thresholds for events is not the same as changing the ratings of contextual threat (see below) which were designed rigorously to exclude self-report of distress (as they are when rating adults’ events).

b) Classifying events and difficulties, and rating threat, focus and independence The adult classification system was retained: events and difficulties were classified under the headings used in the Adult LEDS dictionary

0. Education