Sensation Seeking, Traumaerleben und Bewältigungsstrategien: eine empirische Untersuchung an Einsatzkräften

Abstract

This investigation deals with sensation seeking in rescue forces. We are interested in the scores regarding this variable and relationship between these and other relevant variables. Aim of this research is to find connections between sensation seeking and traumatic stress and what is the role of coping in this connections. All in all we are going to exam Sensation Seeking as a protective factor for traumatic stress.The subjects in this investigation are firefighters and emergency-medical-technicians. We use the German Sensation-Seeking-Scale version 5 (SSS-V) and the Arnett-Inventory-of-Sensation-Seeking (AISS-D) to assess sensation seeking. To explore the traumatic stress symptoms in subjects, we use the Posttraumatic-Stress-Diagnostic-Scale (PDS) and for the coping strategies the short version of Janke and Erdmanns Coping- Questionnaire (SVF-78).We found differences between the rescue forces and the control group in reference to subscales "thrill and adventure seeking" (TAS) and "experience seeking" (ES) as well as no connections between the sensation seeking scales and subscales and traumatic stress symptoms. We found only a significance by trend correlation concerning experience seeking and avoidance. Furthermore we found correlations between AISS-scales as well as the SSS-V-subscales and coping strategies. Partial correlation showed very low coefficients regarding Experience Seeking and Avoidance if we insert coping strategies as a control variable.When we look at the reliability of the questionnaires to assess sensation seeking, we find out that values are very low. Therefore we have to keep in mind that the assessment of Sensation Seeking is defective through an error in measurement and to interpret results carefully. Nonetheless we found that rescue forces search more actively thrills and adventures and the control group more sensual and spiritual stimuli in our sample. We can't prove that sensation seeking is a personality trait which is able to protect form traumatic stress symptoms. However we found evidence that sensation seeking is associated with coping strategies which diminish successfully stress.