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Three conceptually different methods for assessing life events (normative, contextual, and subjective) were compared in 63 patients suffering from major depressive disorder and 25 healthy subjects. There was little variation in the reproducibility (inter-rater agreement and test-retest) of the various measurements of stress during life events. Correlations between the scales, although all statistically significant ( P<0.01) were of relatively low order, thus suggesting that the three methods measure partially different phenomena. Subjective and normative methods are the most distant from each other, and the contextual measurement appears to be intermediate. Nevertheless the normative and contextual measures achieved almost identical and significant results in distinguishing depressives from controls. The subjective method, on the other hand, could not detect any significant difference. Apart from selfratings, which appear to be weaker methodologically and practically, there are no absolute criteria to make any one method preferable. The method to be used, therefore, depends on the investigator's aims, hypothesis, and practical considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]