Daily stressors in the lives of Sri Lankan youth: a mixed methods approach to assessment in a context of war and natural disaster

This paper describes the use of a mixed methods design to develop the Sri Lankan Children’s Daily Stressor Scale (CDSS). It brie£y describes its use in a study assessing the relative contribution of daily stressors on the one hand, and war and disaster exposure on the other, to young people’s mental health and psychosocial wellbeing.The authors discuss the neglect of daily stressors; the stressful social and material conditions of everyday life in settings of armed con£ict and natural disaster and o¡er a rationale for the importance of assessing daily stressors when seeking to understand and address mental health and psychosocial needs of con£ict and disaster a¡ected youth. A central focus of the paper is on the unique value of a mixed methods approach to contextually sound measure development.