Preventive medicine
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Preventive medicine · Jan 2001
Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study Clinical TrialCounselor and stimulus control enhancements of a stage-matched expert system intervention for smokers in a managed care setting.
Previous research has demonstrated the efficacy of an interactive expert system intervention for smoking cessation for a general population. The intervention provides individualized feedback that guides participants through the stages of change for cessation. Enhancing the expert system by adding proactive telephone counseling or a stimulus control computer designed to produce nicotine fading could produce preventive programs with greater population impacts. ⋯ The enhanced conditions failed to outperform the expert system alone. The study also demonstrated the ability of the interactive expert system to produce significantly greater cessation in a population of smokers than assessment alone.
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Preventive medicine · Dec 2000
Comparative StudyIt won't happen to me: lower perception of heart disease risk among women with family histories of breast cancer.
The threat that breast cancer poses to American women, particularly to women with family histories of the disease, has received widespread attention in both medical and popular literatures. While this emphasis may have laudable consequences on breast cancer screening, it may also have a negative consequence, obscuring women's recognition of their risks for other health threats, such as heart disease. This study examined the possibility that women with family histories of breast cancer may be particularly susceptible to overestimating their risks of breast cancer while minimizing their risks of cardiovascular disease. ⋯ The emphasis on breast cancer risk, especially for women with family histories of the disease, may need to be balanced by educational efforts concerning women's risk of other diseases, particularly cardiovascular disease.
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Preventive medicine · Nov 2000
Factorial validity and invariance of questionnaires measuring social-cognitive determinants of physical activity among adolescent girls.
There are few theoretically derived questionnaires of physical activity determinants among youth, and the existing questionnaires have not been subjected to tests of factorial validity and invariance. The present study employed confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to test the factorial validity and invariance of questionnaires designed to be unidimensional measures of attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and self-efficacy about physical activity. ⋯ Evidence was provided for the factorial validity and the invariance of the questionnaires designed to be unidimensional measures of attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and self-efficacy about physical activity among adolescent girls.
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Preventive medicine · Nov 2000
Physical load in daily life and low back problems in the general population-The MORGEN study.
We studied the contribution of physical load in daily activities, including activities in work, housekeeping, and leisure time, to the burden of low back problems (LBP) in the population. ⋯ Because LBP present such a large public health problem, the estimated potential impact of eliminating (the unhealthy effect of) physical load is substantial. To assess the real health gain, more insight is necessary into the causality of the relationship and into effective preventive measures.