This proposal seeks support to augment the data collection and data analysis efforts of the 1984-85 Detroit Area Study (DAS), a yearly survey funded by the State of Michigan and used by the University of Michigan to train graduate students in survey research. Each year a Faculty Investigator orients the survey to a particular topic while the staff of the University's Institute for Social Research instruct graduate students in the various tasks that go into producing a survey. Sampling, pretesting, and some interviewing are done by the students themselves, while the professional staff of the Institute's Survey Research Center (SRC) conduct the bulk of the interviews, code the data, and prepare a computerized data tape. In the second year of the DAS sequence, students write papers based on the data in a course on survey data analysis. The 1984-85 DAS will focus on sex differences in psychological distress among married men and women. Dr. Ronald Kessler will be the Faculty Investigator. Face-to-face interviews will be administered to approximately 500 men and women (250 couples) in the Detroit metropolitan area. This proposal seeks support to augment the survey in three ways. First, we request support to increase the sample size to 1000 couples. Second, we request funds to administer a clinical interview to a subsample of respondents stratified on a first-stage symptom screening scale. Third, we request funds for data analysis. The proposed study is timely for two reasons. First, recent developments in measurement make it possible to study role-related stresses objectively. The inability to obtain objective assessments of this sort has been a major impediment to empirical analysis of the relationship between sex roles and emotional functioning in the past. Second, recent findings about the importance of network events in explaining the sex-distress relationship point the way toward a new approach to the collection and analysis of life events data. This could have profound implications for our understanding of the sex-distress relationship.
| McLeod, J D (1994) Anxiety disorders and marital quality. J Abnorm Psychol 103:767-76 |
| McLeod, J D (1993) Spouse concordance for depressive disorders in a community sample. J Affect Disord 27:43-52 |
| Kessler, R C; Wethington, E (1991) The reliability of life event reports in a community survey. Psychol Med 21:723-38 |
| McLeod, J D (1991) Childhood parental loss and adult depression. J Health Soc Behav 32:205-20 |
| Mattlin, J A; Wethington, E; Kessler, R C (1990) Situational determinants of coping and coping effectiveness. J Health Soc Behav 31:103-22 |
| Coyne, J C; Kessler, R C; Tal, M et al. (1987) Living with a depressed person. J Consult Clin Psychol 55:347-52 |
