Psychological correlates of arbovirus preventive health behaviour.

BACKGROUND: Current arbovirus preventive health interventions do not take social and personality variables into account. Social cognition models posit that people engage in preventive health behaviour (PHB) after an assessment of the perceived risk of disease, an analysis of potential consequences and an evaluation of self-efficacy. METHODS: In a sample of 385 undergraduate and medical students, we examined the association between social relationships, conscientiousness and mosquito repellent use. Data were analysed in a series of stepwise regression analyses. RESULTS: Social relationships influenced the association between conscientiousness and mosquito repellent use. As expected, perceptions of positive social relationships and conscientiousness are positively linked with mosquito repellent use. Conversely, perceptions of negative social relationships are linked to an inverse association between conscientiousness and mosquito repellent use. CONCLUSIONS: Future interventions designed to increase perceptions of social relationships might be helpful in increasing arbovirus preventive health behaviour such as using mosquito repellents. Since the present study was concurrent correlational in nature, future research would benefit from experimental interventions designed to directly examine the effect of enhancing positive relations and social support on arbovirus preventive health behaviour.

The relationship between childhood sexual abuse and sexual health practices of homeless adolescents.

This study explored the gender differences in sexual self-concept, personal resources for sexual health, safe sex behaviors, and risky sexual behaviors among homeless adolescents with and without histories of sexual abuse. Data for this secondary analysis were collected in 2003 to 2004 in the first phase of a larger repeated-measures sexual health intervention study; 371 homeless youth between 16 and 23 years of age (M = 19.26, SD = 1.83) were recruited from a street outreach center. The majority (64.6%) of participants were males. Self-report instruments were completed at the outreach center via audio computer-assisted self-interview (A-CASI) format. It was found that female participants were better off than males on numerous measures of sexual health behaviors and attitudes. Sexually abused participants had significantly less future time perspective (p = .05), fewer sexual self-care behaviors (p = .04), and less social support than nonabused participants (p = .01) and almost significantly more sexual risk-taking (p = .08). However, no significant differences were found between abused and nonabused participants on sexual self-concept, self-efficacy or intention to use condoms, safe sex behaviors, AIDS knowledge, assertive communication, or self-efficacy to perform testicular/ breast self-exams. Overall, participants who did not report a history of sexual abuse had significantly more sexual health resources and engaged in fewer sex-risk behaviors than those who reported having been abused. These differences have notable implications for screening adolescents for a history of sexual abuse. Adolescents who report sexual abuse should receive risk counseling and be screened regularly for the development of sexual risk behaviors.

A Longitudinal Study of the Development of Emotional Deception Detection Within New Same-Sex Friendships.

Previous studies show that close friends improve at lie detection over time. However, is this improvement due to an increase in the ability to decode the feelings of close friends or a change in how close friends communicate their true and deceptive emotions? In a study of 45 pairs of friends, one friend from each pair (the "sender") was videotaped showing truthful and faked affect in response to pleasant and unpleasant movie clips. The other friend from each pair (the "judge") guessed the true emotions of both the friend and a stranger 1 month and 6 months into the friendship. Judges were better at guessing the true emotions of friends than strangers, and this advantage in judging friends increased among close friends over time. Surprisingly, improvement over time was due mostly to a change in the sender's communication, rather than an increase in judges' ability to decode their friends' feelings.

Eating behaviors among school-age children associated with perceptions of stress.

Eating has been theorized to be useful as a coping strategy in response to stressful situations. However, investigation of this behavior in children is limited. The present study is a secondary cross-sectional analysis of longitudinal data that were collected from cohorts of fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grader students. Perceived stress was correlated with unhealthy eating behaviors (r = .13, p < .001), as well as with the use of eating as a coping mechanism (r = .24, p < .001). Hispanic children reported using eating as a coping mechanism most frequently, followed by African-American and Caucasian children. School-age children who experience high levels of stress may be at risk for developing unhealthy eating habits in order to cope; continued examination of these relationships is suggested. Future research should focus on the development of interventions to encourage positive coping mechanisms and healthy eating behaviors.

The relationship between prayer, health behaviors, and protective resources in school-age children.

The purpose of this study was to examine (1) the relationship between children's use of prayer as a coping strategy and other protective resources, and (2) whether children who prayed frequently and those who never prayed exhibited different levels of perceived stress and health behaviors. Prayer was found to be positively related to the protective resources of social connectedness and sense of humor. In addition, children who prayed frequently reported significantly higher levels of positive health behaviors than children who never prayed. These two groups of children did not significantly differ in their levels of perceived stress.