Page No.121-130
Seema Mehrotra and Aruna Kumari
NIMHANS, Bangalore Derby, United Kingdom
The paper describes the development of a measure of hassles suitable for use
with Indian adolescents. The measure consists of 28 items that capture
cumulative exposure to hassles in various domains of daily life in the past six
months through the use of frequency rating format. The items were generated
using the perspectives of adolescents themselves. The measure was constructed
in such a way as to minimize the possibility of contamination of exposure ratings
with perceptions of severity of stress or psychological symptoms. A field trial
with 272 pre-university students indicated satisfactory internal consistency. The
hassles scores were significantly correlated with worry and well being measures
providing support for the convergent validity of the measure. Hassles in the
academic domain were rated as having high frequency of occurrence. The
implications of the study findings as well as the directions for further research
on the Hassles measure are highlighted