Measuring Stress

". . .their work is coherent, lively, and to the point." --Contemporary Psychology"A valuable resource for all individuals interested in any aspect of stress research." --Health and Stress"This book is a must-read for those involved or wishing to be involved in stress research."--Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience"This book is superior to previous reviews of stress research in a number of respects. . .it should be required reading for anyone, regardless of level of expertise, interested in understanding how stressful experiences contribute to physical and psychiatric disorders and illness behaviors."--Psychosomatic Medicine"A valuable resource for all individuals interested in any aspect of stress research." --Health and Stress"How does one describe a text that serves as a ready resource for the assessment of stress measurement in major research on physical and psychiatric illness in humans? Rigorous. What about a text that is meant to convey this topic to scholars who hail from psychology, sociology, epidemiology, psychiatry, social work, and nursing? Comprehensive. Can an edited book achieve these ends without sacrificing clarity or consistency across contributions, alienating suchdisparate audiences, or losing appeal for advanced students and experts? Emphatically, yes. Stress continues to be a central entry in the canon of the social science side of health, and a booksummarizing important assessment studies and guiding researchers to appropriate measures ... is timely. The editors ... clearly labored to create a balanced resource book ... The 16 authors who wrote the chapters ... did an excellent job of following this editorial lead--their work is coherent, lively, and to the point."--Contemporary Psychology"Considerable care and planning went into the design and preparation of this volume. The chapters share a consistency in style, organization, and quality that is altogether too rare in edited volumes. Each chapter is quite thorough, which should make the volume valuable for more experienced researchers. Both the editors and the authors consistently opted to cover carefully selected topics and measures in depth instead of providing superficial coverage to abroader range of topics or measures. Each chapter not only discusses the strengths, but also discusses the limitations of these measures. All told, the range of measures covered by these nine chaptersprovides a very broad and valuable perspective on what stress is, and how it may be assessed. Individuals who are seeking information converning the major methods of conceptualizing and measuring stress will find this volume to be an invaluable resource." -- Craig Smith, PhD, The Health Psychologist, Fall 1996, Vol 18, No 4

• PART I: CONCEPTUALIZING STRESS AND ITS RELATION TO DISEASE; PART II: ENVIRONMENTAL PERSPECTIVES; PART III: PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES; PART IV: BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES