The List of Threatening Experiences (LTE) is an instrument developed by Traolach Brugha and measures the occurrence of 12 major categories of stressful life events¹⁾ via self-report (section: mental health). The 12 major categories of stressful life events were selected for their established long-term consequences.
In Lifelines, the LTE is used in tandem with the Long-term Difficulties Inventory (LDI) to assess stress in participants.

The LTE is a 12-item self report questionnaire that measures stressful life events. For each response category, participants indicated whether or not they experienced each of these events in the last 12 months (yes=1/no=0)²⁾.
The Dutch translation includes an additional thirteenth question: “Did you experience any other major severe negative events (yes/no)? If yes, briefly describe what happened?” Item scores are summed to derive a total score³⁾. Inter- and intra-rater reliability were assessed for the LTE ¹⁾³⁾ and only for one item (concerning something valuable that was lost or stolen) the intra-rater variability was not significant. Intra-rater reliability of the Dutch version is only available for the lifetime version of the questionnaire, which was assessed twice approximately two years apart (covering the same period).

The LTE questionnaire has been used several times in general assessments (1A, 1B, 1C, 2A) as well as in additional assessments (NEXT, ACTQ, BIOQ). The main question differed between the assessments as follows:

Virtually no changes have occurred in the list of 13 stressful events that participants had to choose from (yes/no). Only for event 13, 'other negative events', there were three open text fields to fill-in during general assessments and this was reduced to one open text field in ACTQ and BIOQ.