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Publications (93)
Despite the growing body of research examining harassment and violence against educators, few studies have studied the impact of intersecting identity characteristics, such as gender, disability, and race. This study quantitively examined the direct, unique, and combined influences of gender, disability, and race for both rates and frequency of har...
Compared children with CP/ADHD, CPCU/ADHD, ADHD-only, and controls on two measures of inhibitory control: a Simon/flanker task that measured response selection and a stop signal task that measured response inhibition. Results showed: (a) ADHD was associated with both measures of inhibitory control; (b) control children had better overall performanc...
Background
Our thoughts impact our mental health and there is a distinction between thought content (what we think) and thought process (how we think). Habitual thinking has been proposed as one such process. Habits, which are cue-dependent automatic responses, have primarily been studied as behavioural responses.Methods
The current scoping review...
Research examining the rates, frequency, and impact of harassment and violence that elementary school educators experience from students, parents, colleagues, and administrators is sparse. Over 1000 educators from publicly funded elementary schools in Ontario completed surveys assessing the rate, frequency, and impact of various forms of harassment...
Despite the increasing number of studies investigating environmentally friendly behavior, relatively little research has examined the attitudes, subjective norms, perceived ability, and intentions of individuals to restrict their consumption. The current study validated a new measure of consumption restriction developed from the Theory of Planned B...
Little is known about the specific manner in which students cope with academic failure. To address this gap, a new measure of failure-coping behaviour was developed and validated. Two hundred and thirty-eight undergraduate students completed a new measure of failure-coping behaviour, in addition to measures of failure appraisal, depressed mood, aca...
We aimed to develop and conduct a feasibility trial of a brief intervention to target proximal risk factors (i.e., cognitive vulnerability) to prevent depression, as well as to improve understanding of the mechanism of change in our prevention program by the incorporation of the theory of planned behaviour. Thirty-seven university students particip...
Purpose:
To examine the benefit of continuation treatment with citalopram in adolescents 13 to 18 years of age with major depression using a multi-site randomized placebo controlled discontinuation design.
Methods:
Subjects with depression who responded to open label treatment with citalopram in 12-week acute phase were randomized to continued t...
The realisation that most mental disorders have their onset before the age of twenty-five has focused psychiatric research towards adolescent mental health. This book provides vivid examples of school mental health innovations from eighteen countries, addressing mental health promotion and interventions. These initiatives and innovations enable rea...
Chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome (CP/CPPS) is a chronic pelvic pain condition largely refractory to treatment. Cannabis (marijuana) use has been reported for a wide variety of chronic pain conditions, but no study has examined prevalence of cannabis use, symptom benefit or side effects, or frequency in CP/CPPS.
Participants were rec...
Primary healthcare in developed countries is undergoing important reforms, and these require evaluation strategies to assess how well the population's expectations are being met. Although numerous instruments are available to evaluate primary healthcare (PHC) from the patient perspective, they do not all measure the same range of constructs. To ana...
The current study compared the antisocial and mental health functioning of incarcerated adolescents with histories of serious and persistent institutional misconduct to those with histories of minor forms of institutional misconduct. Institutional offense histories of 192 incarcerated adolescent offenders (84.5% male) were reviewed and their mental...
Youth mental health is increasingly recognized as a key concern with significant impact on youth and society. School is the one setting where professionals are consistently available to monitor how children are functioning and learning and intervene and support. School psychiatry has expanded beyond individual mental health problems to school-wide...
Clear benefits of school-based interventions focusing on health and mental health promotion or illness have been documented. A number of permanent repositories that rate and list effective school-based programs have been established. However, efforts to implement programs on a mass scale have not succeeded. There is a need to balance program develo...
The aim of this study was to rate the importance of primary healthcare (PHC) attributes in evaluations of PHC organizational models in Canada.
Using the Delphi process, we conducted a consensus consultation with 20 persons recognized by peers as Canadian PHC experts, who rated the importance of PHC attributes within professional and community-orien...
Patient evaluations are an important part of monitoring primary healthcare reforms, but there is little comparative information available to guide evaluators in the choice of instruments or to determine their relevance for Canada.
To compare values and the psychometric performances of validated instruments thought to be most pertinent to the Canadi...
Evaluating the extent to which groups or subgroups of individuals differ with respect to primary healthcare experience depends on first ruling out the possibility of bias.
To determine whether item or subscale performance differs systematically between French/English, high/low education subgroups and urban/rural residency.
A sample of 645 adult use...
Instruments have been developed that measure consumer evaluations of primary healthcare using different approaches, formats and questions to measure similar attributes. In 2004 we concurrently administered six validated instruments to adults and conducted discussion groups to explore how well the instruments allowed patients to express their health...
This paper presents an overview of the analytic approaches that we used to assess the performance and structure of measures that evaluate primary healthcare; six instruments were administered concurrently to the same set of patients. The purpose is (a) to provide clinicians, researchers and policy makers with an overview of the psychometric methods...
The operational definition of first-contact accessibility is "the ease with which a person can obtain needed care (including advice and support) from the practitioner of choice within a time frame appropriate to the urgency of the problem"; accommodation is "the way healthcare resources are organized to accommodate a wide range of patients' abiliti...
The operational definition of interpersonal communication is "the ability of the provider to elicit and understand patient concerns, to explain healthcare issues and to engage in shared decision-making if desired."
To examine how well interpersonal communication is captured in validated instruments that evaluate primary healthcare from the patient'...
The operational definition of relational continuity is "a therapeutic relationship between a patient and one or more providers that spans various healthcare events and results in accumulated knowledge of the patient and care consistent with the patient's needs."
To examine how well relational continuity is measured in validated instruments that eva...
Management continuity, operationally defined as "the extent to which services delivered by different providers are timely and complementary such that care is experienced as connected and coherent," is a core attribute of primary healthcare. Continuity, as experienced by the patient, is the result of good care coordination or integration.
To provide...
Comprehensiveness relates both to scope of services offered and to a whole-person clinical approach. Comprehensive services are defined as "the provision, either directly or indirectly, of a full range of services to meet most patients' healthcare needs"; whole-person care is "the extent to which a provider elicits and considers the physical, emoti...
Respectfulness is one measurable and core element of healthcare responsiveness. The operational definition of respectfulness is "the extent to which health professionals and support staff meet users' expectations about interpersonal treatment, demonstrate respect for the dignity of patients and provide adequate privacy."
To examine how well respect...
Most children with mental health disorders do not receive timely care because of access barriers. These initial trials aimed to determine whether distance interventions provided by nonprofessionals could significantly decrease the proportion of children diagnosed with disruptive behavior or anxiety disorders compared with usual care.
In three pract...
The present study was conducted to investigate a Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) model, which integrated social–cognitive and symptom variables as predictors of self-harm intent. Participants were 62 young adults with a history of self-harm who completed a series of online questionnaires to investigate the role of depressive symptoms and TPB comp...
Self-harm may have several reasons, and these reasons may have corresponding implied goals. The current study examined reasons for self-harm and whether the a priori goals intended by these reasons were achieved. Fifty-seven individuals with a history of self-harm were recruited online and volunteered their time to complete a series of online quest...
Although cognitive theory gives automatic thoughts a causal role in the onset of negative mood and depressive symptoms, little research has directly tested this relationship, and no research has examined whether automatic thoughts explain the effects of personality factors, life events, and positive mood on negative affect. Accordingly, automatic t...
Low rates of participation of adolescents and young adults (AYAs) in clinical oncology trials may contribute to poorer outcomes. Factors that influence the decision of AYAs to participate in health research and whether these factors are different from those that affect the participation of parents of children with cancer.
This is a secondary analys...
There is an increasing demand for researchers to provide research results to participants. Our aim was to define an appropriate process for this, based on needs and attitudes of participants.
A multicenter survey in five sites in the United States and Canada was offered to parents of children with cancer and adolescents with cancer. Respondents ind...
Efforts to improve the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD) have included shortening the scale by selecting the best performing items, lengthening the scale by assessing additional symptoms, modifying the format and scoring of existing items, and developing structured interview guides for administration. We defined item performance exclusive...
School-based mental health initiatives designed to address mental health difficulties in young people face a number of challenges that can limit their effectiveness and sustainability. These include challenges to participation, challenges to knowledge uptake and challenges to timely and ongoing evaluation. In this paper, we review how each of these...
Understanding the reasons for self-harm (SH) may be paramount for the identification and treatment of SH behavior. Presently, the psychometric properties for SH reason questionnaires are generally unknown or tested only in non-inpatient samples. Existing inpatient measures may have limited generalizability and do not examine SH apart from an explic...
Appendix. Option characteristic curves for all PANSS items.
Although the need for early intervention for mental health difficulties is widely acknowledged, few studies have attempted
to explicitly increase actual help seeking behavior for mental health difficulties. Students in intervention classrooms received
two one-hour, in-class workshops on distress and help seeking and were compared to students in non...
In 2004, we undertook a consultation with Canadian primary health care experts to define the attributes that should be evaluated in predominant and proposed models of primary health care in the Canadian context.
Twenty persons considered to be experts in primary health care or recommended by at least 2 peers responded to an electronic Delphi proces...
PURPOSE: The offer to return research results to participants is increasingly recognized as an ethical obligation, although few researchers routinely return results. We examined the needs and attitudes of parents of children with cancer and of adolescents with cancer to the return of research results. METHODS: Seven experts in research ethics score...
Statistical models based on item response theory were used to examine (a) the performance of individual Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) items and their options, (b) the effectiveness of various subscales to discriminate among individual differences in symptom severity, and (c) the appropriateness of cutoff scores recently recommended b...
To examine the use and impact of a dedicated health information Web site for adolescents.
Five hundred fifty-eight (27.2%) of all students in grades 7 through 12 from 4 schools logged onto the Web site; 1775 (86.4%) of all students in these grades completed a year-end health survey, with 455 (81.5%) of the students who used the Web site completing...
We examined the presence and severity of mood disturbance and mental health difficulties as predictors of students' utilization of school health centers.
Mood disturbance and mental health difficulties were assessed through surveys completed at year end. Visits to school health centers were tracked prospectively over the year.
Twenty-three percent...
In this rejoinder, I outline 6 recommendations that may guide the continued devel-opment and validation of measures of depression. These are (a) articulate a formal theory of signs and symptoms; (b) differentiate complex theoretical goals from pragmatic evaluation needs; (c) invest heavily in new methods and analytic mod-els; (d) calibrate all meas...
Since 1918, more than 280 measures of depressive severity have been developed and published. These measures differ in content, response format, and objectives. This article examines (a) the characteristics of scales developed in the past 80 years, and (b) the frequency with which different scales have actually been used in basic science and treatme...
Despite the large number of studies investigating the link between depression and social comparison, little research has examined how depressive vulnerability factors, such as dependency and self-criticism, influence social comparison behavior. Participants in this study (N=102) were able to solicit social comparison feedback, which was favourable,...
Since 1918, more than 280 measures of depressive severity have been developed and published. These measures differ in content, response format, and objectives. This article examines (a) the characteristics of scales developed in the past 80 years, and (b) the frequency with which different scales have actually been used in basic science and treatme...
This study explores gender differences in the association between substance use and elevated depressive symptoms in the general adolescent population.
Cross-sectional self-reported anonymous survey, the 2002/2003 Student Drug Use Survey in the Atlantic Provinces. The sample design was a single-stage cluster sample of randomly selected classes strat...
Few studies have examined the relation between depressive vulnerability factors and the duration of symptom disturbance, defined as the length of time during which mood states are elevated above a certain threshold. We examined the duration of mood disturbances in male (N=31) and female (N=71) college-aged individuals who completed mood checklists...
The authors do not see any benefit to J. C. Coyne. R. Thompson, and V. Whiffen's (2004) proposal to draw sharp boundaries between psychodynamic vulnerability theories, research on the onset of syndromal depression, and research with vulnerable, nondepressed populations. These domains have been and remain mutually relevant. Coyne et al. did not brin...
Although the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAMD) remains the most widely used outcome measure in clinical trials of Major Depressive Disorder, the psychometric properties of the individual HAMD items have not been extensively studied. In the present paper, data from four separate clinical trials conducted independently by two pharmaceutical com...
J. C. Coyne and V. E. Whiffen (1995) reviewed research on personality vulnerability to depression, focusing on S. J. Blatt's (1974, 1990) concepts of dependency and self-criticism and A. T. Beck's (1983) concepts of sociotropy and autonomy. The authors discuss 6 issues raised in that review: (a) the typological or dimensional nature of vulnerabilit...
This longitudinal 8-year study assesses potential predictors of major depressive disorder (MDD) in a cohort of healthy adolescent females at high familial risk for MDD. The objective of this study was to ascertain whether risk factors for female onset MDD would differentiate youth at high or usual risk for MDD, prior to the onset of depressive symp...
Although a large body of research has established the relevance of psychopathy to adult offenders, its relevance to adolescent offenders is far less clear. The current study evaluated the clinical, psychosocial and criminal correlates of psychopathic traits in a sample of 226 male and female incarcerated adolescent offenders. According to an 18-ite...
We examined the extent to which executive functioning difficulties were related to verbal aggression under conditions of gradually increasing or decreasing provocation over both winning and losing trials. Sixty adolescent boys and girls completed a modified Taylor aggression paradigm in which verbally offensive remarks were sent and received. Resul...
Reviews the book,
Emotion-focused therapy: Coaching clients to work through their feelings by Leslie S. Greenberg (see record
2002-00066-000). This book was written for both novice therapists who have had little experience working with emotions in treatment, as well as for experienced therapists looking to systematize their understanding of how e...
Research and theorizing on vulnerability to depression has expanded considerably in the past 40 years. However, there are a number of challenges and opportunities that cannot be adequately resolved or fully exploited within models of vulnerability that are typically investigated. Continued progress in understanding the link between vulnerability fa...
To identify the structure of facial reaction to procedural pain and to determine the subset of facial actions that best describe the response.
Observational.
Five rural and five urban physicians' offices.
One hundred twenty-three children aged 4 to 5 years undergoing routine diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, and polio immunization.
The Child Facial C...
Debate is contentious concerning whether depression should be viewed as a distinct category or as a continuum including overlapping normal and clinical phenomena. A nonparametric item response model was used to evaluate whether the probability of expressing individual symptoms differed between nondepressed and clinically depressed adults experienci...
Debate is contentious concerning whether depression should be viewed as a distinct category or as a continuum including overlapping normal and clinical phenomena. A nonparametric item response model was used to evaluate whether the probability of expressing individual symptoms differed between nondepressed and clinically depressed adults experienci...
Despite widespread use of the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD; M. Hamilton, 1960), questions have been raised concerning its psychometric properties. A nonparametric item response model was used to examine how the probability of observing a specific symptom of depression changes with increases in depressive severity in a sample of depres...
Numerous studies have examined rates of symptom reduction and symptom return across treatment modalities; however, few studies have investigated the degree to which rate of symptom reduction during treatment is related to symptom return following treatment. We examined the relation between symptom return 3 and 6 months after completing treatment an...
To evaluate the effectiveness of interpersonal therapy (IPT) implemented by well-supervised, novice IPT therapists in treating adolescents with moderate to severe mood disorders of lengthy duration.
Twenty-five adolescents with moderate to severe major depression, lasting an average of 8 months, received 12 weeks of IPT. All participants were asses...
Despite widespread use of the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD; M. Hamilton, 1960), questions have been raised concerning its psychometric properties. A nonparametric item response model was used to examine how the probability of observing a specific symptom of depression changes with increases in depressive severity in a sample of depres...
Most research on self-handicapping has focused on adults. Only a few studies have examined self-handicapping in adolescents or the particular characteristics of the family environment that are associated with self-handicapping. Adolescents (N = 141) and their mothers completed a series of questionnaires assessing adolescent self-handicapping, adole...
Despite the broad application of feminist techniques and advances in defining feminist theory for psychological practice, consensus regarding the effectiveness of core components and techniques specific to feminist therapy is still evolving. This paper identifies four core components of feminist therapy: consciousness raising, social and gender rol...
Considerable research has examined the impact of unfavorable feedback on mood and behavior in individuals; however, relatively little research has investigated how favorable and unfavorable feedback may enhance or disrupt cooperative behavior in romantic relationships. The present study examined how favorable and unfavorable performance feedback in...
Existing measures of peer pressure and conformity may not be suitable for screening large numbers of adolescents efficiently, and few studies have differentiated peer pressure from theoretically related constructs, such as conformity or wanting to be popular. We developed and validated short measures of peer pressure, peer conformity, and popularit...
This research examined gender differences in catastrophizing and pain in 80 healthy students (42 women, 38 men) who participated in an experimental pain procedure. Participants completed the Pain Catastrophizing Scale (PCS; Sullivan, Bishop & Pivik, 1995) prior to immersing one arm in ice water for 1 minute. Participants were later interviewed to a...
Evolutionary psychologists emphasize that self-worth and well-being are largely determined by the degree to which individuals garner and hold the interest of others. Personal attributes, such as physical attractiveness, are viewed as resources which serve as signals to others to pay attention to us.
This study examined (a) the degree to which parti...
Existing measures of peer pressure and conformity may not be suitable for screening large numbers of adolescents efficiently, and few studies have differentiated peer pressure from theoretically related constructs, such as conformity or wanting to be popular. We developed and validated short measures of peer pressure, peer conformity, and popularit...
Reviews the books, Using LISREL for structural equation modelling: A researcher’s guide and Principles and practice of structural equation modelling by E. Kevin Kelloway (see record 1998-08130-000) and Principles and practice of structural equation modelling by Rex B. Kline (see record 1998-02720-000). Structural equation modeling (SEM) is one of t...
Despite advances in psychometric theory and analytic techniques, a number of issues regarding the assessment of depression remain unresolved, including the relative effectiveness of response options (option effectiveness), the ability of existing measures to detect differences in depressive severity (scale discriminability), and the extent to which...
A number of individuals with multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) are also diagnosed with depression. However, there is content overlap in MCS and symptoms of depression with respect to somatic complaints. The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) was used to document severity of depressive symptomatology in 42 individuals with MCS. The purpose was to det...
How we exert control over shared resources is critical to understanding how we get along with others. Few studies have attempted to investigate how dependent and self-critical individuals actively influence the quality of their interpersonal environments. We examined the influence of two depressive personality styles, dependency and self-criticism,...
Critics have argued that personality factors believed to represent a vulnerability to depression are not stable and are therefore state dependent. However, conclusions regarding the stability of personality and the relation between personality and depression have been drawn (a) without differentiating relative stability among individual differences...
Previous research investigating the interpersonal environments of dependent and self-critical individuals has focused primarily on attachment issues, such as relationship satisfaction.
In the present study, we examined how dependent and self-critical individuals respond to experimentally manipulated events that threaten or bolster self-worth and st...
Critics have argued that personality factors believed to represent a vulnerability to depression are not stable and are therefore state dependent. However, conclusions regarding the stability of personality and the relation between personality and depression have been drawn (a) without differentiating relative stability among individual differences...
Psychometric analyses evaluated how primary care patients with and without major depressive disorder endorsed individual response options on the Center for Epidemiologic Studies—Depression Scale (CES–D; L. S. Radloff, 1977). The analyses were then used to identify a subset of items that when appropriately weighted improved the efficiency with which...
Psychometric analyses evaluated how primary care patients with and without major depressive disorder endorsed individual response options on the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression Scale (CES-D; L. S. Radloff, 1977). The analyses were then used to identify a subset of items that when appropriately weighted improved the efficiency with which...
Revisions of the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire (DEQ; Blatt, D'Afflitti, & Quinlan, 1976) have failed to replicate the degree of orthogonality routinely observed with the original Dependency and Self-Criticism scales. Item performance on the DEQ was examined by computing correlation coefficients between factor-derived scores and unit-weighted...
Research has identified important psychometric differences between the original Depressive Experiences Questionnaire (DEQ; Blatt, D'Affliti, & Quinlan, 1976) and two of its most widely used revisions, which have failed to preserve the degree of between-scale orthogonality routinely observed with the original Dependency and Self-Criticism scales. Th...
Scale discriminability is the ability of a measure to discriminate among individuals ordered along some continuum, such as depressive severity. We used a nonparametric item-response model to examine scale discriminability in the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) in both college and depress...
Conceptual problems with existing measures of Erikson's ego-integrity construct were identified. It was hypothesized that a core component of ego-integrity involves how individuals evaluate and reflect on past experiences. Accepting the past was formally defined and operationalized and was conceptualized as one source of self-worth central to many...
Nonparametric item response models were used to investigate the psychometric properties of the Beck Depression Inventory in depressed outpatient (
N = 648) and nonpatient college (
N = 1,182) samples. The authors examined item bias between men and women as a function of severity of depression and distinguished group mean differences from item bias....
Abstract Most studies investigating the relation between mood and events have examined,models which assume that the effects of positive and negative events accumulate and persist. Despite the
