A questionnaire designed to assess roles and goals: a preliminary study.

Social-cognitive theories of depression predict that an individual is at more risk of becoming depressed if the individual's only dominant role or goal is disrupted by a life-event. This paper reports the development of an instrument which assesses the individual's important roles and goals; preliminary data are presented from two samples (sample 1 of elderly people, sample 2 of younger adults) taken from the age-sex registers of GP practices. The overall reliability of the questionnaire is good, and evidence was obtained for the predicted pattern of an overvalued role or goal being more likely to be correlated with depressive symptomatology.