Assessing the impact of stressful incidents in organizations: the development of an extended impact of events scale

Employers are becoming increasingly aware of the risks to employee wellbeing associated with the traumatic incidents that occur in the workplace. Despite this increased organizational awareness of the need to protect employees from the damaging effects of traumatic events, there has been little provision to help organizations to evaluate their management systems and post trauma interventions. This problem of a lack of evaluation has become more important as a growing body of evidence has provided evidence that suggests that trauma debriefing, the widely used approach to traumatic stress may be ineffective or damaging. The problem for an organization is to have a means of assessing the impact of a traumatic incident on exposed employees soon after the event and at regular intervals as a way of tracking the effectiveness of the treatment and rehabilitation programme. This paper examines the development and validation of a traumatic stress questionnaire designed to be used by trained practitioners working with traumatized employees. The extended impact of events scale (IES-E), took the 15 items from the impact of events scale (IES) and added eight new items which had been chosen on the basis of existing theory and clinical experience to represent the traumatic stress symptom of hyperarousal. Two studies are reported which examine the structure and reliability, and then the discriminant validity of the extended scale when used with a working population. The first study involved a factor analysis of the IES-E items using data collected from 105 subjects who had formally reported exposure to stressful work events to their employing organization. The second study then used the IES-E to compare employees self-reporting of the impact of either a major positive or a major negative life event. The results of the first study confirmed the presence of the re-experience and avoidance symptoms as a response to a traumatic event (as in the IES) but, in addition, identified a new factor, arousal and a new measurement model based on a single general factor. The reliability coefficients for all three scales and the general factor were found to be good. The second study showed that IES-E scores on re-experience, avoidance, arousal and the general factor could be used to discriminate between the subjects reporting major positive and negative life events. Two measurement models can therefore describe the impact of stressful events, the first based on three orthogonal factors, and the second based on a single general factor. The theoretical implications of these findings are explored.     

Photography as a therapeutic tool for substance abuse clients who have a history of sexual abuse

Symptoms of sexual abuse among persons in substance abuse treatment facilities may be difficult to recognise since presenting symptoms frequently mirror those associated with substance abuse. Additionally, treatment may be difficult due to a lack of previous verbal processing and shared negative defence mechanisms that are resistant to traditional talking therapy. The use of photography is presented here as a method of treatment initiation and exploration for substance abuse clients who have a history of sexual abuse. The paper reviews rationale, advantages, current applications and practitioner concerns associated with the use of photography as a therapeutic tool.     

Women,alcohol, self‐concept and self‐esteem: A qualitative study of the experience of person‐centred counselling

This study explores the self‐concept and self‐esteem of women with alcohol problems from a client perspective, and relates the findings to person‐centred theory and practice. Eight women with severe and long‐standing alcohol problems, who had received person‐centred counselling, were interviewed in relation to their sense of self over time. The data were analysed using grounded theory methodology, resulting in the emergence of five key categories. Examples from the interviews are used to illustrate the complex relationships between life experience, self‐concept, self‐esteem and drinking. The possible significance of the findings for counsellors working with this client group is discussed.     

“Where Is Everybody?” Fermi’s Paradox,Evolution, and Sin

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project has been scanning the heavens for signs of intelligent life for almost half a century. So far, nothing. This raises the question physicist Enrico Fermi asked, “Where is everybody?” The probability of intelligent life on another planet is high so why the silence? Technological civilizations may be short-lived. The mechanisms of evolution that lead to intelligent life and technological development also lead to propensities traditionally labeled as sin. These propensities make it difficult for technological civilizations to survive long enough to escape their home planet.     

Social support,self-esteem,and positive health practices of early adolescents

The purpose of this study was to examine the relations of social support and self-esteem to positive health practices in early adolescents. A sample of 148 early adolescents (70 boys and 78 girls), aged 12 to 14 years, attending an urban middle school, responded to The Revised Personal Lifestyle Questionnaire, the Personal Resource Questionnaire 85-Part II, and the Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale in classrooms. A correlation of .59 (p<.05) was found between scores on social support and scores for positive health practices, and a correlation of .44 (p<.05) between scores on the Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale and scores for positive health practices.     

The effects of various rater training procedures on the perception of social skills and social anxiety

Procedures for the behavioral assessment of social skills typically rely on judges' perceptions of subjects' behavior in several simulated situations. This study examined two methodological variables which could influence the degree of situational specificity perceived by social skill judges. Forth-eight judges were presented videotapes of 15 actors who role played responses to eight simulated social situations. Half of the judges viewed the situations in a sequential fashion and the remaining half viewed the tapes grouped by situations. The second factor of this design included three different expectancy conditions included in an analogue training procedure. Differences in observed variability were examined for both social skill and social anxiety constructs. Order of stimulus presentation had no effect on variability. The expectancy manipulation significantly increased variability among social skill ratings but had no effect on reliability.This study was supported in part by the Veterans Administration.     

Time to read semantically related sentences*

Ss read sentences specifying relations among concepts, with the sentences related to each other in different hierarchical structures. In the case where sentences had implicative relationships, time to read sentences low in the hierarchy was less if sentences higher in the hierarchy had been read previously, and sentences inconsistent with expectations based on earlier items took longer. However, when structural relations did not involve implication about content, time to read the sentences was not very different regardless of whether related sentences had been read previously.     

Debriefing individuals affected by violence

For some time there has been a growing concern about violence in the workplace. This concern has tended to focus on employees with jobs which involve them in witnessing and dealing with the effects of disasters or traumas, such as the police, firefighters and ambulance personnel, rather than the actual victims of violent incidents. In the early 1980's, a psychological intervention known as either critical incident or psychological debriefing was introduced by the emergency services as a way of reducing the long term effects of exposure to traumatic events. The techniques involved in debriefing have been described by a number of workers (Dyregrov, 1989; Mitchell & Everly, 1993; Raphael, 1986). In all these models of debriefing, the debrief is undertaken with groups of victims, all of whom have been involved in a single traumatic incident as emergency workers. This paper describes the common features of the debriefing process; explains why debriefing is helpful; differentiates between debriefing and counselling; explores and contrasts three models of debriefing. Finally, it looks at a model of individual debriefing developed within the British Post Ofice to meet the specific needs of employees who have suffered personal attacks or other traumatic incidents.