life events and difficulties schedule life events and difficulties schedule 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. 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. 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. life events and difficulties schedulepurposemeasurement of the stressfulness of life events part of a series onpsychology outline history subfields basic types abnormal behavioral behavioral genetics biological cognitive/cognitivism comparative cross-cultural cultural developmental differential evolutionary experimental mathematical neuropsychology personality positive psychodynamic psychometrics quantitative social applied psychology applied behavior analysis clinical community consumer counseling critical educational environmental ergonomics food forensic health humanistic industrial and organizational legal medical military music occupational health political psychometrics religion school sport traffic lists disciplines organizations psychologists psychotherapies research methods theories timeline topics psychology portal 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. research the life events and difficulties schedule proved a powerful instrument to predict changes in neuroticism.