Development and validation of a short version of the questionnaire of stressful life events (QSLE)

• Published in: Clinical psychology and psychotherapy Vol. 30; no. 6; pp. 1464 - 1470
• Main Authors: Butjosa, Anna, Usall, Judith, Vila‐Badia, Regina, Del Cacho, Nuria, Gómez‐Benito, Juana, Barajas, Ana, Banos, Iris, Grau, Norma, Granell, Luis, Sola, Andrea, Hami‐Carlson, Janina, Dolz, Montserrat, Sanchez, Bernardo, Araya, S., Arranz, Belén, Arteaga, M., Asensio, R., Autonell, Jaume, Baños, Iris, Bañuelos, Montserrat, Barceló, M., Blanc, M., Borrás, M., Busquets, E., Carral, V., Castro, M., Corbacho, C., Coromina, Marta, Dachs, I., Domenech, M. D., Elias, M., Espezel, I., Falo, Enric, Fargas, A., Foix, Alexandrina, Fusté, Montserrat, Godrid, Monica, Gómez, D., González, Olga, Gumà, L., Haro, Josep Maria, Herrera, S., Huerta, Elena, Lacasa, Fernando, Mas, N., Martí, L., Martínez, R., Matalí, Josep Luis, Miñambres, Aitor, Miquel, Laia, Muñoz, Daniel, Muñoz, V., Nogueroles, Rocio, Ochoa, Susana, Ortiz, Jose Miguel, Pardo, Marta, Planella, Marc, Pelaez, Trini, Peruzzi, Santiago, Rivero, Silvia, Rodriguez, Maria Jose, Rubio, Elena, Sammut, Stephanie Jeanne, Sánchez, M., Sánchez, Bernardo, Serrano, Eduard, Solís, Caroline, Stephan‐Otto, Christian, Tabuenca, Pilar, Teba, Sílvia, Torres, Anna, Urbano, David, Vilaplana, Miriam, Villalta, Victoria
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England John Wiley and Sons, Limited 01.11.2023
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Child; Children; Humans; life events; Middle Aged; psychometric properties; Psychometrics; Psychosis; Psychotic Disorders - diagnosis; Questionnaires; Reproducibility of Results; stress; Surveys and Questionnaires; validation; Young Adult; life events; stress; psychometric properties; psychosis; validation
• ISSN: 1063-3995; 1099-0879
• DOI: 10.1002/cpp.2886

Stressful life events (SLE) tend to occur before the onset of psychosis, this highlights the importance of its detection and evaluation in these patients. The need to have instruments that assess SLE easily and quickly underpins the objective of this study, which is to validate a short version of the questionnaire of stressful life events (QSLE). 124 patients with first‐episode psychosis and 218 healthy controls aged between 11 and 52 years were recruited. The QSLE scale underwent discrimination analysis, which revealed 18 items had good SLEs discriminability between the two samples. These 18 items were then used to create the shorter QSLE‐SV. The QSLE‐SV showed good internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.749). An AUC of 0.830 was observed, suggesting that the predictor was good. Using 2 as the cut‐off score to predict an individual as a patient would yield a sensitivity of 91.1% and a specificity of 51.6%, and using a cut‐off point of 3, the sensitivity was 77.4% and the specificity was 72.5%. QSLE‐SV displayed satisfactory psychometric properties in a Spanish population. The QSLE‐SV allows for investigating childhood, adolescent and adult life events by measuring current stress and age on a continuous scale in a quick and easy way.