Construction of the Life Events Scale for military personnel

Objective To construct a Life Events Scale for Chinese military personnel,and establish a standardized tool for exploring the origins and intensity of psychological stress in Chinese military personnel.Methods The life event items included in the Scale,which were closely related to servicemen's work and life style,were collected by intensive interviews with 54Chinese military personnel and from an open-end questionnaire submitted by 127Chinese military personnel.A total of 1167Chinese servicemen completed the Life Events Scale developed by interviews,open-end questionnaire and literature reviews,and the obtained data were then analyzed.Results The Life Events Scale for Chinese military personnel consisted of 45items.The Cronbach’sαof the Life Events Scale for Chinese military personnel was 0.71,and the test-retest reliability was 0.79.The correlation between the score of the scale with SCL-90was 0.63,and the illness group was significantly different from the control group in the amount stressors in one year.Conclusions The Life Events Scale for Chinese military personnel reaches satisfactory reliability and validity,and can be used as measurement of life stressors for military personnel.The Life Events Scale is very easy to operate.