Assessing the relationship of Type A beliefs to cardiovascular disease risk and psychosocial distress

Investigators have begun to take a multimodal approach to the assessment and treatment of psychosocial risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD). For instance, cognitive responses have become the focus of contemporary research along with continued examination of overt Type A behaviors. Price (1982) has outlined a set of beliefs purportedly associated with Type A behavior and subsequent CVD risk. The current study examines the validity of this belief set as represented by a newly developed measure, the Type A Cognitive Questionnaire (TACQ). Subjects were 221 employed adults participating in a worksite CVD risk reduction program. They completed the TACQ as part of a pretreatment CVD risk screening protocol. As hypothesized, TACQ scores were significantly associated with Type A behavior, hostility, physiological mediators of CVD, and psychosocial distress. Discussion addresses continued refinement of the Type A belief construct.     

A comparison of Guided Imaginal Coping and imaginal exposure in the treatment of panic disorder

The present study evaluated the efficacy of a new intervention, Guided Imaginal Coping (GIC), compared to imaginal exposure (IEX), and a waiting-list control (WLC) condition among 24 clinic outpatients meeting DSM-III-R criteria for panic disorder (PD) or PD with agoraphobia. GIC was the more consistently effective intervention, with individuals demonstrating significant improvement in frequency and severity of panic attacks (Pas) as well as significant reductions in physiological and subjective arousal to provocative imagery. Individuals in the IEX intervention demonstrated less consistent improvement on the dependent measures, while individuals in the WLC condition essentially remained unchanged. Both GIC and IEX were effective according to a composite measure of clinically significant improvement. However, only GIC was superior to the WLC condition when clinical improvement was defined as zero PAs at follow-up. These findings, while preliminary, suggest that GIC can be added to the armamentarium of effective approaches to treating PD.     

Comparison of simultaneous prompting with and without error correction in teaching science vocabulary words to high school students with mild disabilities

This study compared the effectiveness and efficiency of simultaneous prompting with and without error correction during daily probe sessions in teaching science vocabulary words. The teacher presented the vocabulary word definitions as instructive feedback during training sessions. Five 16–17 year old students with disabilities participated in an adapted alternating treatments design that evaluated the simultaneous prompting strategy, error correction and instructive feedback. Instruction occurred in a group format using choral responding. The results indicate that (a) all students learned to read the vocabulary words, (b) simultaneous prompting with error correction was slightly more efficient for three of the five subjects in learning the targeted words, and four of the five students made fewer errors in this condition, (c) all students preferred simultaneous prompting with error correction over simultaneous prompting without error correction, (d) words mastered in both conditions generalized equally, (e) there were minimal differences between the two conditions in the collected maintenance data, and (e) students experienced only minimal improvement in their ability to define vocabulary words (instructive feedback). Discussion focuses on issues for further research and implications for instructional practice with simultaneous prompting, error correction and instructive feedback.     

Assertiveness, social support, and psychological adjustment following spinal cord injury.

Tested predictions that assertiveness and social support would be significantly predictive of psychological adjustment. Furthermore, it was anticipated that assertiveness and certain types of social relationships would differentially interact to predict adjustment, since positive and negative effects of both variables have been noted in prior research. Trained raters interviewed 156 persons receiving either in-patient or out-patient care for cord injuries and administered measures of assertiveness, social support, depression and psychosocial impairment. Persons who reported a keen sense of responsibility for the welfare of another reported more depression and impairment. Persons reporting higher levels of support facilitating social integration and reassuring personal worth were less depressed. Several significant interactions between assertiveness and different social support relationships revealed beneficial and deleterious effects on depressive behavior and impairment secondary to the disability. Results are discussed as they advance theoretical understanding of the effects of assertiveness and social support. Implications for discriminate cue learning in assertion training for persons with physical disability are proposed.     

Children at risk for delinquency: A follow-up comparison of aggressive children and children who steal

This study compared the follow-up incidence of court-recorded nonstatus offenses for three groups of adolescent children. These children had been seen 2 to 9 years earlier for problems with aggression in the home (N = 21), for stealing problems (N = 25), or for normative comparisons (N = 14). The results showed that 77% of the children with stealing problems had court-recorded offenses. This was significantly higher than the aggressive children, whose rate did not differ from the normative sample. These findings suggested that young aggressive children were not at risk for adolescent court contact. Instead, it was the young child with identified stealing problems who was highly likely to become an official delinquent. It also appeared that parental reports of stealing events constituted a predictive measure of later criminal acts.     

Guidance and counselling in Irish schools

The development of guidance services in Irish schools since the sixties is described and discussed. Provision for the full-time training of guidance teachers began in 1967, and after a brief attempt to use short courses as a substitute, this has now been accepted as the standard form of basic training. Since 1972 approximately 90 guidance teachers have qualified each year, and by 1974 they were present in about 24% of post-primary schools. Data is reported from a survey of early graduates from the one-year course at University College Dublin, and also from a survey of the attitudes to guidance of the heads of schools with guidance teachers. Some comments are also provided on the current status of guidance in Ireland.     

Quality of life of adolescent males with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder

Most psychosocial research on attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has focused on deficits in school, family, or behavioral functioning without incorporating perceived quality of life (QoL) or the adolescents' perspective. The Youth Quality of Life Instrument--Research Version (YQOL-R), was used to assess self-perceived QoL in a community sample of adolescents aged 11-18 years. Fifty-five adolescent males with a clinical diagnosis of ADHD were compared to a group of 107 adolescents with no chronic conditions (NCC) and a group of 52 adolescents with mobility impairments (MI). The adolescents with ADHD reported significantly lower perceived QoL scores, particularly in the Self and Relationship domains, than the NCC group. Their scores were similar to those from the group with MI, a group previously shown to have a substandard QoL. Interventions to improve self-esteem and social interactions might use QoL outcomes in evaluating effectiveness.     

The tripartite model of anxiety and depression: symptom structure in depressive and hypertensive patient groups

The structure of self-reported symptoms representative of the tripartite model was examined using data drawn from the Medical Outcomes Study (Tarlov et al., 1989). Participants were persons who had been diagnosed 48 months previously as suffering from either depression (N = 315) or hypertension (N = 403). Results of confirmatory factor analyses were broadly consistent with the tripartite model (L. A. Clark & Watson, 1991). Factors emerged corresponding to each of the 3 posited first-order dimensions of negative affect, positive affect, and physiologic arousal. Nonetheless, some discrepancies were found between the observed data and the hypothesized tripartite model. First, the obtained physiologic arousal factor was best viewed as reflecting nonspecific somatic distress rather than physiologic arousal. Finally, although differentiable in the strictest statistical sense, all three domains were significantly correlated (.36 to.86, absolute value). In particular, contrary to the tripartite model, positive and negative affect covaried markedly (-.81 to -.86). Findings raise issues concerning the utility of the tripartite model as a heuristic framework for enhancing understanding of individual differences in normal mood as well as mood disorders.     

Supporting Implementation: The Role of Community Development Teams to Build Infrastructure

Evidence-based methods for assisting consumers, such as counties, in successfully implementing practices are lacking in the field of implementation science. To fill this gap, the Community Development Teams (CDT) approach was developed to assist counties in developing peer networks focused on problem-solving and resource sharing to enhance their possibility of successful implementation. The CDT is an interactive, solution-focused approach that shares many elements of the Interactive Systems Framework (ISF) for Dissemination and Implementation. An ongoing randomized implementation trial of Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care (MTFC) was designed to test the hypothesis that such interactive implementation methods are more successful at helping counties achieve successful and sustainable MTFC programs than standard individualized implementation methods. Using the Stages of Implementation Completion measure, developed for this study, the potential benefit of these interactive methods is examined at different stages of the implementation process ranging from initial engagement to program competency.     

Gender differences in type a behavior and hostility within an organizational setting

Abstract

Recent investigations suggest that the hostility component of the Type A behavior patter (TABP) is a greater detriment to health than the overall pattern. Some researchers suggest that certain Type A characteristics (e.g., job-involvement) are actually adaptive. This study compared the relative relationship of the TABP and hostility to career-related achievement and psychosocial adjustment among 223 service-delivery employees. Male and female participants completed the Jenkins Activity Survey and the MMPI Hostility Scale as part of a cardiovascular disease risk factor screening. The TABP was positively associated with managerial status for both men and women. However, the TABP was positively related to psychosocial adjustment variables among men only. Hostility was significantly related to undesirable outcomes including lower job status, life dissatisfaction, and unfavorable perceptions of the workplace for both men and women. Discussion addresses organizational factors which might perpetuate hostility and the TABP, as well as gender differences in the experience of these constructs.