Health psychology review
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Health psychology review · Dec 2018
Meta AnalysisAttentional bias to pain-related information: a meta-analysis of dot-probe studies.
Studies investigating attentional biases towards pain information vary widely in both design and results. The aim of this meta-analysis was to determine the degree to which attentional biases towards pain occur when measured with the dot-probe task. A total of 2168 references were screened, resulting in a final sample of 4466 participants from 52 articles. ⋯ In contrast, attentional biases towards affective pain stimuli were not significant for any pain groups. This meta-analysis found support for attentional biases towards sensory pain stimuli in patients with chronic pain in comparison to healthy individuals across a range of common parameters. Future researchers need to consider task design when seeking to optimally measure pain-relevant attentional biases.
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Health psychology review · Jun 2016
Review Meta AnalysisSpiritual coping, psychosocial adjustment, and physical health in youth with chronic illness: a meta-analytic review.
The current systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to assess the strength of the relationships between religious/spiritual coping strategies and psychosocial adjustment and physical health in youth with chronic illness. ⋯ The results reveal that spiritual coping is an important coping strategy for paediatric patients. Consistent with findings among adults with chronic illness, negative spiritual coping puts paediatric patients at risk for psychosocial maladjustment and poorer health. Intervention research is needed to determine if targeting spiritual coping improves health and psychosocial well-being.
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Health psychology review · Jan 2015
Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler: towards a protocol for accumulating evidence regarding the active content of health behaviour change interventions.
There is a need to consolidate the evidence base underlying our toolbox of methods of behaviour change. Recent efforts to this effect have conducted meta-regressions on evaluations of behaviour change interventions, deriving each method's effectiveness from its association to intervention effect size. ⋯ An iterative protocol for evidence base accumulation is proposed that integrates evidence derived from both experimental and applied behaviour change research, and combines theory development in experimental settings with theory testing in applied real-life settings. As evidence gathered in this manner accumulates, a cumulative science of behaviour change can develop.