No abstract

No abstract

Development of the Hassles Assessment Scale for Students in College, a new scale to measure students' stress, is described. In the scale, students rate each of 54 hassles for its frequency and unpleasantness in the past month and indicate the degree to which they dwelt or ruminated on it. Very high levels of internal consistency for the frequency, unpleasantness, and dwelling measures were found. Correlational analyses demonstrated the scale's criterion validity (scores were negatively correlated with the number of hours respondents reported engaging in physical exercise) and congruent validity (scores were positively correlated with scores on the Inventory of College Students' Recent Life Experience, an established scale for assessing student hassles). Exploratory factor analyses suggested the possibility that many items on the scale are independent, with each contributing some specific variance to the total variance of the item pool that is not shared with other items.

No abstract

The role of heredity in the presence of asthma, severity of the condition, and impact of 12 specific triggers of attacks was investigated. Health surveys containing questions about children's asthma characteristics were completed by 325 families with twin children across the United States. Data for 39 monozygotic twin pairs and 55 same sex dizygotic twin pairs who were between 2 and 20 years of age and had asthma present in at least one member of each pair were received and analysed. Results revealed higher concordance for the presence of asthma among monozygotic (58.97%; n=23) than dizygotic twins (23.64%; n=13). Further analyses were restricted to data from the concordant monozygotic and dizygotic twin pairs. Asthma severity (the product of attack frequency and intensity ratings) was significantly correlated for monozygotic pairs but not for dizygotic pairs, and this difference in monozygotic and dizygotic severity correlations was significant. Also, monozygotic twins showed significantly higher correlations than dizygotic twins for the impacts of two asthma triggers: respiratory infection and physical activity. These results indicate a role of heredity in the presence of asthma and suggest that genetic factors may also affect the severity of children's asthma condition and the impact of respiratory infection and physical exertion as asthma triggers. (Arch Dis Child 1995; 73: 112-116)