Assessment of life events during adolescence: the use of self-report inventories

The assessment of stressful life events during adolescence is important to both research and clinical practice. Stressful events are studied to determine their etiological significance in physical and mental illnesses, and also their relevance in the clinical assessment of individual patients. In recent years, a number of self-report inventories of life events for adolescents have been developed, some very carefully, others as one-time endeavors. This article reviews these measures, with an emphasis on the conceptual and methodological issues which created problems in earlier inventories. These issues need to be considered when choosing an instrument to study or assess stressful life events in adolescents.