Life Events and Difficulties Schedule

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| name = Life Events and Difficulties Schedule

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| purpose =measurement of the stressfulness of life events

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The Life Events and Difficulties Schedule is a psychological measurement of the stressfulness of life events. It was created by psychologists George Brown and Tirril Harris in 1978.{{cite book |year=1978 |title=Social origins of depression: A study of psychiatric disorder in women |location=London |publisher=Tavistock |isbn=978-0-422-76310-3 |first1=George William |last1=Brown |first2=Tirril |last2=Harris |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pmAhsL44_60C}} Instead of accumulating the stressfulness of different events, as was done in the Social Readjustment Rating Scale by Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe, they looked at individual events in detail.{{cite journal |doi=10.1016/0022-3999(67)90010-4 |last1=Holmes |first1=Thomas |last2=Rahe |first2=Richard |year=1967 |title=The Social Readjustment Rating Scale |journal=Journal of Psychosomatic Research | volume=11 |issue=2 | pages=213–218 |pmid=6059863}} The schedule is made up of an interview by which as much contextual information around the event as possible is collected. The event is then rated by "blind" raters using this contextual information.

Critics of this method note the fact that the impact of the independent variable, the event itself, is measured by evaluating it using mediating and moderating variables.{{Citation needed|date=May 2010}}