The influence of socioeconomic status and ethnicity on adolescents' exposure to stressful life events.
OBJECTIVE
To test the relations between resource-based and prestige-based measures of socioeconomic status (SES), ethnicity, and life events that varied in valence, dependency on adolescent behavior, and duration.


METHODS
Six measures of SES were administered to the parents of 148 black and white adolescents, who completed a measure of five mutually exclusive categories of life events.


RESULTS
As predicted, our results suggest that having few assets and being black were independently related to life events exposure. Correlations between socioeconomic indices were not so high as to suggest redundancy, and different SES indicators were of importance in predicting exposure to different types of life events.
Brady
Sonya S
SS
University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, USA.
Matthews
Karen A
KA
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior / Q000208:ethnology*; D001741:Black or African American / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008016:Life Change Events; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D012923:Social Class; D012931:Social Environment; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D044465:White People / Q000523:psychology*