Pulmonary injury following exposure to chlorine gas. Possible beneficial effects of steroid treatment.

Two sisters were exposed to chlorine gas in toxic quantities in the same room of their home during an industrial accident. One was hospitalized and treated with corticosteroids and oxygen therapy, while the other received evaluation in the emergency room, and brief oxygen therapy and was released without corticosteroid therapy. Pulmonary physiologic studies have been performed on both patients at intervals following the exposure. The treated patient was stable, with normal results on studies of pulmonary function at the end of two years, while the sibling not treated with corticosteroids had demonstrable abnormalities of gas exchange which persisted during 55 months of observation. This "natural experiment" gives evidence of prolonged detrimental effects of sublethal exposure to chlorine gas on human pulmonary function in some patients. The effect of the differences in treatment between the two siblings cannot be definitely assessed in this single situation.

Sex differences in the marital functioning of treated alcoholics.

Fifty-five treated alcoholics (31 males and 24 females) were matched with a control group of social drinkers on four dimensions: sex, age, level of education and number of children. Spouses of alcoholic and non-alcoholic respondents were also sampled (total n = 199). Respondents and spouses completed the following questionnaires: The Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS), the Areas of Change Questionnaire (AC), and the Marital Status Inventory (MSI). Major results were as follows: (1) Alcoholics reported poorer marital functioning than non-alcoholics. (2) Male alcoholics described less troubled relationships than did female alcoholics. (3) However, spouses of alcoholics described strained marriages in both cases. (4) Alcoholic couples were less congruent than control couples on conscious decisions regarding marital dissolution. (5) Alcoholic wives had taken more steps towards marital dissolution than their husbands had, whereas alcoholic husbands had taken fewer steps than their wives had. It was suggested that male alcoholics externalize their drinking and deny its impact on their marriages, whereas female alcoholics acknowledge their drinking and take the blame for their marital problems. Therapeutic and research implications were discussed.

Sensation seeking, augmenting-reducing, and the perceived and preferred effects of drugs.

The following measures were administered to 78 undergraduates: the General and Disinhibition subscales of Zuckerman's (1971) Sensation-Seeking Scale; the Reducer-Augmenter Scale (RAS; Vando, 1970, 1974); self-reported use of alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis; the degree of attribution of stimulant, depressant, and neutral effects to these drugs; and desirability ratings of stimulant and depressant effects ascribed to various drugs. Major findings were as follows: (a) On the RAS, reducing correlated positively with both sensation-seeking measures. (b) Seven of the nine personality-versus-drug-use correlations were positive and significant. (c) Generally, the effects attributed to drugs did not differ by sex, personality, or use. (d) However, frequent drinkers attributed stimulant effects to alcohol more strongly than depressant effects, whereas infrequent drinkers did the opposite. (e) The mean desirability ratings of stimulant and depressant drug effects correlated positively. (f) High disinhibitors rated drug effects of both kinds more favorably than did lows. (g) A similar, more favorable evaluation by high than by low general sensation seekers was significant for male subjects only. (h) Score on the Reducer-Augmenter Scale was not significantly predictive of subjects' desirability ratings.

Sensation seeking, augmenting-reducing, and absolute auditory threshold: a strength-of-the-nervous-system perspective.

The following measures were obtained from 42 student volunteers: the General and the Disinhibition subscales of the Sensation Seeking Scale (Form IV), the Reducer-Augmenter Scale, and the Absolute Auditory Threshold. General sensation seeking correlated significantly with the Reducer-Augmenter Scale, r(40) = .59, p less than .001, and the Absolute Auditory Threshold, r(40) = .45, p less than .005. Both results proved general across sex. These findings, that high-sensation seekers tend to be reducers and to lack sensitivity to weak stimulation, were interpreted as supporting strength-of-the-nervous-system theory more than the formulation of Zuckerman and his associates.

Hassles, health, and personality.

College undergraduates (N = 211) responded to a "decontaminated" hassles scale plus measures of trait anxiety, reactivity, perceived stress, psychiatric symptomatology, and minor physical ailments. All but the anxiety and reactivity scales were time referenced to the past month. Major findings were as follows: (a) Hassles and trait anxiety both contributed positively to perceived stress, jointly accounting for 58% of the variance; (b) hassles and reactivity both had a significant positive impact on minor ailments, together explaining 23% of the variance; and (c) hassles and trait anxiety had a significant interactive effect on psychiatric symptomatology, which along with the nonsignificant marginal main effects accounted for 67% of the variance. The positive impact of hassles on psychiatric symptomatology increased as trait anxiety rose; likewise, the pathogenic effect of trait anxiety increased with greater exposure to hassles.

The impact of television advertising on alcohol consumption: an experiment.

A videotaped indoor soccer game was shown to 125 men college students, ostensibly to evaluate the sport's televiewing appeal. Different versions of the videotape included zero, four or nine beer commercials. Refreshments, including beer, were available to the subjects. Half the subjects had immediate access to beer, and half had access delayed by one half hour. Exposure to the first few commercials increased consumption; however, continued exposure did not. Over the entire experiment, advertising had no significant effect on total beer consumption. Delayed access to beer led to compensatory beer consumption, notably in the third half hour. The results of the present study were interpreted as not supporting strong concern about television advertising's impact on immediate consumption of available alcohol. The results suggest that experiments on alcohol advertising are likely to produce negative results where drinking is measured over a substantial period (e.g., an hour or more), and positive results where drinking is measured over a brief period (e.g., half an hour or less).

Wine, women, suspiciousness and advertising.

Women college students (N = 66) viewed videotapes of a soap opera episode and a rock music program, ostensibly to evaluate the appeal of such material to college women. Different versions of the videotape included zero, three or nine wine commercials. Refreshments, including white wine, were available to the subjects. Suspiciousness about the experiment was evaluated through an open-ended questionnaire, responses to which were independently content-analyzed by two scorers. Major findings were as follows: Women exposed to nine wine commercials consumed more wine than those exposed to three. Twelve women were judged suspicious about the experiment, but none showed continued specific awareness of the study's true purpose. The differential consumption patterns of women in the three-wine-commercial and nine-wine-commercial conditions were exaggerated among suspicious women. These findings, in light of previous observations, suggest opposite reactions to soft-sell versus hard-sell persuasive appeals by men and women, notably ones predisposed to be suspicious about the purpose of experiments.

Child-rearing factors, authoritarianism drug use attitudes, and adolescent drug use: a model.

With the use of questionnaire returns from 214 male and 286 female upper-year high school students, a model of adolescent drug use is proposed. The model hypothesizes that the parents' child-rearing practices produce within the child a personality which shapes his attitudes toward the use of drugs, which in turn affect the child's use of marijuana, alcohol, and tobacco. The personality dimension in the model is Authoritarianism. The model proved more successful in predicting illicit than licit drug use. Further, love on the part of the mother and positive control on the part of the father were the most salient dimensions within the model with regard to child-rearing practices.

Maturational changes in Canadian adolescents' cognitive attitudinal structure concerning marijuana.

Thirty-four items concerning marijuana use were administered three times to a cohort of Canadian high school students between Grades 11 and 13, in 1977 (n = 439), 1978 (n = 419), and 1979 (n = 167). These items were designed to measure four distinct constructs: attitude, perceived peer approval or disapproval, concern about risks, and symbolic protest against conventional society. A cross-sectional factor analysis of the Grade 13 data supported the hypothesized factor structure, as had earlier work with college students. However, analogous analyses on the Grade 11 and Grade 12 data contradicted the hypothesized factor structure. Most notably, separate factors for positive and negative attitude appeared in the Grade 11 and 12 analyses. The data were interpreted primarily in terms of maturational changes, largely through elimination of alternative interpretations by internal analyses and previous findings. Implications were discussed for adolescent cognitive-attitudinal development, attitude theory, and analysis of panel data.

The social image of the young female smoker.

Community college students (N = 229) read a brief narrative about a young female college student and rated her on 14 bipolar scales. Half the subjects read a version in which the protagonist smoked, and half an otherwise identical version in which she didn't. Although most subjects recalled the protagonist's smoking status, very few recognized this as the focal variable in the experiment. Subjects rated the heroine less positively for social attractiveness (p less than 0.001) and personal resourcefulness (p less than 0.01) when she was represented as a smoker. They specifically considered the smoking protagonist more masculine (p less than 0.01), less feminine (p less than 0.001), less healthy (p less than 0.001), a poorer student (p less than 0.001), less wise (p less than 0.001), less self-disciplined (p less than 0.001), less sophisticated (p less than 0.001), and less gentle (p less than 0.02). Non-smoking subjects also rated the smoking heroine as less (physically) attractive (p less than 0.05), although smoking subjects did not discriminate significantly.

The Survey of Recent Life Experiences: a decontaminated Hassles Scale for adults.

A new decontaminated hassles measure for adults, the Survey of Recent Life Experiences, was developed and validated. An initial pool of 92 items was administered to 100 subjects along with the Perceived Stress Scale. Fifty-one items were selected, based on significant correlations with the latter scale. The alpha reliability of the resultant final form of the Survey of Recent Life Experiences and its correlation with perceived stress were both high. In a separate cross-replication sample of 136 adults, the alpha reliability of the Survey and its correlation against the Perceived Stress Scale remained acceptably high. Moreover, separate-sex analyses supported the reliability and validity of the Survey of Recent Life Experiences across gender. Factor analysis of the Survey yielded six interpretable factors. Intercorrelations among subscales based on these factors were generally modest, suggesting that the scale is relatively free from contamination by psychological distress.

Alcohol advertising, consumption and abuse: a covariance-structural modelling look at Strickland's data.

Re-analysis employing covariance-structural models was conducted on Strickland's (1983) survey data on 772 drinking students from Grades 7, 9 and 11. These data bear on the relations among alcohol consumption, alcohol abuse, association with drinking peers and exposure to televised alcohol advertising. Whereas Strickland used a just-identified model which, therefore, could not be tested for goodness of fit, our re-analysis tested several alternative models, which could be contradicted by the data. One model did fit his data particularly well. Its major implications are as follows: (1) Symptomatic consumption, negative consequences and self-rated severity of alcohol-related problems apparently reflect a common underlying factor, namely alcohol abuse. (2) Use of alcohol to relieve distress and frequency of intoxication, however, appear not to reflect abuse, although frequent intoxication contributes substantially to it. (3). Alcohol advertising affects consumption directly and abuse indirectly, although peer association has far greater impact on both consumption and abuse. These findings are interpreted as lending little support to further restrictions on advertising.

The Inventory of College Students' Recent Life Experiences: a decontaminated hassles scale for a special population.

The development and validation of a new decontaminated hassles measure, the Inventory of College Students' Recent Life Experiences, are described. An initial pool of 85 items was administered to 100 undergraduates along with the Perceived Stress Scale. Forty-nine items were selected based on significant correlations against the Perceived Stress Scale. The alpha reliability of the resultant final form of the Inventory of College Students' Recent Life Experiences and its correlation against the Perceived Stress Scale were both high. In a separate cross-replication sample of 108 undergraduates, the alpha reliability of the Inventory and its correlation against the Perceived Stress Scale showed little shrinkage. Furthermore, separate analyses for male and female subjects supported the reliability and validity of the Inventory of College Students' Recent Life Experiences across gender. Factor analysis of the Inventory yielded seven interpretable factors. Intercorrelations among sub-scales based on these factors were generally modest, though in all cases significant, suggesting that the Inventory is relatively free of contamination by psychological distress.

Factor analysis of the interpersonal trust scale with a noncollege population.

This study tested the invariance of the factorial structure of Rotter's Interpersonal Trust Scale (ITS) in a noncollege population. Exploratory factor analysis of the responses of 214 volunteers yielded three factors interpreted as Exploitation, Sincerity, and Institutional Trust. This factor solution was cross-validated in a confirmation sample of 196 volunteers. Cosines between corresponding factors were high across samples and across sex. The similarity was pointed out between the present factor structure and the results of earlier studies with college students. Implications for possible refinement of the ITS were discussed.