The thoughts of parents to vaccinate their children against COVID-19: An assessment of situations that may affect them.

INTRODUCTION: This study examined what affects parents' thoughts about vaccinating their children. We explored whether parents' attitudes towards the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine and their perception of control of COVID-19 were related to their thoughts about vaccinating their children. METHODS: The sample of this descriptive study consisted of parents (n = 274) with children between the ages of 0-12. To collect data on parents' thoughts and opinions participants completed the Attitudes Towards COVID-19 Vaccine Scale and the Perception of Control of COVID-19 Scale. RESULTS: Parents' thoughts about having their children vaccinated were related to a number of children, gender, education status, employment status, death of a relative due to COVID-19, and fear of taking their child to a hospital due to fear of COVID-19. There was a statistically significant relationship between the parents' thought of vaccinating their children against COVID-19 and the mean scores of the Attitudes Toward the COVID-19 Vaccine Scale and the Perception of Control of COVID-19 Scale. CONCLUSION: It was surprising that parents with a high education level and working parents had negative thoughts about getting their children vaccinated against COVID-19. In addition, parents' attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccine and their perceptions of COVID-19 control were related to parents' thoughts on getting their children vaccinated.

Emotion Regulation in Close Relationships: The Role of Individual Differences and Situational Context.

A substantial amount of research has examined the role of individual differences in the regulation of emotion and the impact of emotion regulation on mental health; however, few studies have covered the role of situational context in the selection of emotion regulation strategies. In this paper, we investigate the extent to which an individual's choice of emotion regulation strategy is affected by factors such as emotional intelligence, the person with whom one is in conflict, situational sense of control, and the individual's aim in dealing with the conflict. A total of 300 participants (46.67% female) between the ages of 21 and 35 were recruited from the community (female's mean age = 28.14, SD = 4.49; male's mean age = 28.12, SD = 4.32). Participants filled out a set of questionnaires related to their emotion intelligence and emotion regulations they used in two interpersonal incidents with parents and partner. Structural equation modeling was used for data analyses. Results showed that positive correlation between emotional intelligence and cognitive reappraisal, in contrast to previous studies, a positive correlation between emotional intelligence and repression was found. Moreover, the person one is interacting with influences the degree to which one's sense of control impacts the choice of emotion regulation strategy. For example, in the event of conflict with one's parents, the degree of situational control has little impact on emotion regulation; however, in conflicts with spouses or partners, women have more situational control and are more likely to use cognitive reappraisal or suppression. Regarding the relationship between the goal of emotion regulation and the strategies used, this study found that they are moderated by gender and the persons involved; for example, when maintaining the relationship is the primary goal of emotion regulation, cognitive reappraisal is more likely the strategy of choice for men involved in a conflict with their partner and for women involved in a conflict with their parents. Overall, the results confirm that emotion regulation is affected by both individual and situational factors, indicating the importance of adopting a dynamic approach when investigating emotion regulation.

Stress and Feline Health.

In the health sciences, stress often is defined in terms of stressors; events that are perceived as threats to one's perception of control. From this perspective, a stressor is anything that activates the central threat response system (CTRS). Recent research shows that the CTRS can be sensitized to environmental events through epigenetic modulation of gene expression. When CTRS activation is chronic, health and welfare may be harmed. Environmental modification can mitigate the harmful effects of chronic CTRS activation by reducing the individual's perception of threat and increasing its perception of control, which improves health and welfare.

Using Mobile Phones to Examine and Enhance Perceptions of Control in Mildly Depressed and Nondepressed Volunteers: Intervention Study.

BACKGROUND: Perceived control is strongly linked to healthy outcomes, mental healthiness, and psychological well-being. This is particularly important when people have little control over things that are happening to them. Perceived control studies have been performed extensively in laboratory settings and show that perceived control can be increased by experimental manipulations. Although these studies suggest that it may be possible to improve people's mental health by increasing their perceived control, there is very little evidence to date to suggest that perceived control can also be influenced in the real world. OBJECTIVE: The first aim of this study was to test for evidence of a link between noncontrol situations and psychological well-being in the real world using a mobile phone app. The second and arguably more important aim of the study was to test whether a simple instructional intervention on the nature of alternative causes would enhance people's perceptions of their own control in these noncontrol situations. METHODS: We implemented a behavioral action-outcome contingency judgment task using a mobile phone app. An opportunity sample of 106 healthy volunteers scoring low (n=56, no depression) or high (n=50, mild depression) on a depression scale participated. They were given no control over the occurrence of a low- or high-frequency stimulus that was embedded in everyday phone interactions during a typical day lasting 8 hours. The intervention involved instructions that either described a consistent alternative cause against which to assess their own control, or dynamic alternative causes of the outcome. Throughout the day, participants rated their own control over the stimulus using a quantitative judgment scale. RESULTS: Participants with no evidence of depression overestimated their control, whereas those who were most depressed were more accurate in their control ratings. Instructions given to all participants about the nature of alternative causes significantly affected the pattern of perceived control ratings. Instructions describing discrete alternative causes enhanced perceived control for all participants, whereas dynamic alternative causes were linked to less perceived control. CONCLUSIONS: Perceptions of external causes are important to perceived control and can be used to enhance people's perceptions. Theoretically motivated interventions can be used to enhance perceived control using mobile phone apps. This is the first study to do so in a real-world setting.

Goal disturbance changes pre/post-renal transplantation are related to changes in distress.

OBJECTIVE: Renal transplantation (RTx) is considered the treatment of choice for end-stage renal disease (ESRD) given its association with lower mortality, and improved overall quality of life and psychological functioning compared to dialysis. However, much less is known about which factors underlie these psychological improvements across RTx. Goal theory suggests that experienced disturbances in important goals are related to lower psychological functioning. This study aimed to (1) identify the most disturbed and most important goals for patients before RTx, (2) to examine changes in goal disturbance and goal importance pre/post-RTx, and (3) to examine whether changes in goal disturbance are associated with changes in psychological distress over time, and whether this relationship is mediated by changes in perceived control. METHODS: In this longitudinal study, 220 patients completed questionnaires before and after RTx, including questionnaires to assess goals (GOALS questionnaire), psychological distress (GHQ-12), and perceived control (Mastery scale). RESULTS: End-stage renal disease affected both general and disease-specific goals. Approximately 30% of the patients indicated to experience high or very high disturbance before transplantation. Goal disturbance generally decreased significantly pre- to post-RTx, whereas goal importance did not change significantly pre- to post-RTx. No mediation effect of perceived control was found. Instead, both changes in goal disturbance and perceived control showed independent effects on changes in distress. CONCLUSIONS: Intervention strategies targeting attainable and realistic goal setting, and perceived control in RTx recipients who do not benefit optimally from RTx, might enhance psychological functioning in this population. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Kidney transplantation improves patients' psychological functioning. Experienced disturbances in important life goals are related to lower psychological functioning in chronic illness. What does this study add? Goal disturbance decreases after renal transplantation, and this is related to a decrease in distress over time. Perceived control does not mediate the relationship between goal disturbance and distress pre/post-transplantation. Changes in perceived control have an additional main effect on changes in distress.

Parents with high levels of communicative and critical health literacy are less likely to vaccinate their children.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the relationship between parents' health literacy and decision-making regarding child vaccinations. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 731 parents of children aged 3-4 years. Functional, communicative, and critical health literacy (HL), knowledge, beliefs, reliability of the vaccine's information resources, and vaccine's attitudes were measured. Attitudes included three types: pro-vaccine attitudes, anti-vaccine attitudes, and attitudes regarding mandatory vaccination. Path analysis was conducted to explore direct and indirect associations of compliance with childhood vaccinations and HL. RESULTS: Communicative HL has a significant negative direct association with compliance with vaccinations (ß=-0.06, p<0.05). High functional and critical HL have significant negative indirect associations with vaccinations through parents' attitudes regarding vaccines. Higher levels of perception of reliability of informal information resources are associated with non-compliance. CONCLUSIONS: The results indicate that parents with high functional, communicative, and critical HL are more at risk of not vaccinating their children. The results are contrary to expectations in which people with high HL adopt more positive health behaviors. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: Public health professionals may need more sophisticated communication methods to transfer messages regarding vaccines to parents in order to prevent decline in vaccine coverage rates, taking into account levels of trust and health literacy.

Perceived control over health, communication and patient-physician trust.

OBJECTIVE: Patient-physician trust is linked to higher medication adherence. To date, the relationship between trust and perceived control over health, a strong driver of patient health behavior, has not been tested. This study tested the contribution of patient perceived control over health to the explained variance in patient-physician trust, beyond the contribution of known antecedent. This study also tested the moderation effect of perceived control over health on the relationship between participative communication and patient-physician trust. METHODS: This cross sectional study is based on a representative sample of 820 Israeli respondents with identical healthcare plans. Measures were used in previous studies and hold good psychometric properties. RESULTS: Structural equation modeling supported study hypotheses. Patient perceived control over health uniquely contributed eight percent to the explained variance of trust. When perceived control over health was high and perceived communication was participative, trust was higher. CONCLUSION: Communication with patients is to focus on the enhancement of patient perceived control over health. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: Training programs should aim at creating awareness among physicians to the importance of perceived control over health and to their ability to enhance it. Training programs should also facilitate the adoption and implementation of participative communication skills.

Searching for control: priming randomness increases the evaluation of ritual efficacy.

Reestablishing feelings of control after experiencing uncertainty has long been considered a fundamental motive for human behavior. We propose that rituals (i.e., socially stipulated, causally opaque practices) provide a means for coping with the aversive feelings associated with randomness due to the perception of a connection between ritual action and a desired outcome. Two experiments were conducted (one in Brazil [n = 40] and another in the United States [n = 94]) to evaluate how the perceived efficacy of rituals is affected by feelings of randomness. In a between-subjects design, the Scramble Sentence Task was used as a priming procedure in three conditions (i.e., randomness, negativity, and neutral) and participants were then asked to rate the efficacy of rituals used for problem-solving purposes. The results demonstrate that priming randomness increased participants' perception of ritual efficacy relative to negativity and neutral conditions. Implications for increasing our understanding of the relationship between perceived control and ritualistic behavior are discussed.

Efectos Psicológicos de la Violencia e Inseguridad en Adultos Mayores

La salud pública, particularmente la salud mental son ejes centrales de discusión entorno al desarrollo humano y local. En este sentido, la delincuencia no sólo compromete la seguridad civil, sino además incide en el desarrollo de demencias en adultos mayores. El presente estudio se propuso demostrar la confiabilidad y validez de un instrumento para establecer un constructo multidimensional del miedo al crimen y discutir la rectoría del Estado en materia de bienestar emocional ciudadano. Se llevó a cabo un estudio trasversal y correlacional con una muestra no probabilística de 208 adultos mayores. Los resultados muestran que los factores de percepción de riesgo y control explican el 63% de la varianza frente al 37% de la varianza que explicó la actitud hacia la corrupción, negligencia y opacidad de las autoridades. La percepción de control (0,81) fue el indicador preponderante en el modelo de relaciones de dependencia reflejantes [χ2 = 14,12 (15 gl) p < 0,000; GFI = 0,975; CFI = 0,970; RMSEA = 0,001].

Public health, particularly mental health is central to discussions about human and local development. In this regard, crime committed not only civil security but also affects the development of dementia in older adults. This study aimed to demonstrate the reliability and validity of an instrument to establish a multidimensional construct of fear of crime and discuss the guidance of the State's citizen emotional wellbeing. A cross-sectional and correlational study with a nonrandom sample of 208 older adults was conducted. The results show that the perception of risk factors and control explained 63% of variance compared to 37% of the variance explained the attitude towards corruption, negligence, and opacity of the authorities. The perception of control (0.81) was the leading indicator model reflecting dependence relations [χ2 = 14.12 (15 gl) p <0.000; GFI = 0.975; CFI = 0.970; RMSEA = 0.001].

Gobernanza del Terror a la Delincuencia

La salud pública, particularmente la salud mental son ejes centrales de discusión en torno al desarrollo humano y local. En este sentido, la delincuencia no sólo compromete la seguridad civil, sino además incide en el desarrollo de demencias en adultos mayores. El presente estudio se propuso demostrar la confiabilidad y validez de un instrumento para establecer un constructo multidimensional del miedo al crimen y discutir la rectoría del Estado en materia de bienestar emocional ciudadano. Se llevó a cabo un estudio trasversal y correlacional con una muestra no probabilística de 208 adultos mayores. Los resultados muestran que los factores de percepción de riesgo y control explican el 63% de la varianza frente al 37% de la varianza que explicó la actitud hacia corrupción, negligencia y opacidad de las autoridades. La percepción de control (0,81) fue el indicador preponderante en el modelo de relaciones de dependencia reflejantes [χ 2 = 14,12 (15 gl) p < 0,000; GFI = 0,975; CFI = 0,970; RMSEA = 0,001]

Public health, particularly mental health is central to discussions about human and local development. In this regard, crime committed not only civil security but also affects the development of dementia in older adults. This study aimed to demonstrate the reliability and validity of an instrument to establish a multidimensional construct of fear of crime and discuss the guidance of the State's citizen emotional wellbeing. A cross-sectional and correlational study with a nonrandom sample of 208 older adults was conducted. The results show that the perception of risk factors and control explained 63% of variance compared to 37% of the variance explained the attitude towards corruption, negligence, and opacity of the authorities. The perception of control (0.81) was the leading indicator model reflecting dependence relations [χ 2 = 14.12 (15 gl) p <0.000; GFI = 0.975; CFI = 0.970; RMSEA = 0.001].