The measurement and significance of stressful life events in a cohort of homosexual HIV positive men.

Psychosocial HIV research has contributed greatly to our understanding of the psychosocial impact of the infection. However, assessments of stressful life events in homosexual HIV positive men have been made in the absence of a measurement tool specific to this patient group. This paper presents details of the construction and preliminary validation of such a measure. The inventory, based on the Gay Affect and Life Events Scale (Rosser & Ross, 1989), produces three primary life event values: an index of the overall stress experienced in the previous six months, the number of events experienced and the mean stress value of these events. These measures were highly intercorrelated and were found to be positively associated with measures of emotional distress. Principal components analyses revealed the existence of five event factors and five stress factors. Regression analyses, in which the five stress factors were the predictor variables, revealed that different dimensions of stressful experiences have consequences for emotional functioning (r2 = 0.23), self esteem (r2 = 0.12 & 0.14), social support (r2 = 0.06) and coping (r2 = 0.17 & 0.10). The results suggest that the inventory is a useful and appropriate tool for assessing life experiences in this patient group.