Scaling of life changes: differences between three diagnostic groups and between recently experienced and non-experienced events.

Myocardial infarction (MI), neurosis, and lower back pain patients, and matched control subjects estimated the subjective importance of 46 life change events. They estimated (1) the degree of effort necessary in adjusting to them, and (2) how upsetting they were. The estimates of "adjustment" were on average higher than those of "upset". The neurosis patients gave higher values than their controls. Total life change scores were calculated (1) according to the subjects' estimates of recently experienced life events, and (2) according to their estimates of recently non-experienced events. It was found that the first type of scores discriminated better between the two groups than the second type. The results indicate that different forms of psychological scaling may be used to improve the predictive value of life change data.