Scale Of Threats Research Articles

Arguing Tropical Forest Conservation: People versus Parks

As Terborgh (this issue) points out, the controversy that is the topic of this exchange is not parks. We all agree that nature reserves with minimal human influence are an important component of any conservation strategy in any country. Rather, the point of controversy is how best to achieve a much broader, more comprehensive conservation of nature in a region such as Amazonia, where four-fifths of the forest are still standing. In this setting, it is counterproductive to insist that the only nature worth preserving is pristine, with no human influence, as Terborgh (this issue) and Redford & Sanderson (this issue) seem to be saying. To pursue this narrow interpretation of nature conservation is to ignore the scale and timing of human threats to this forest. By the end of the 1997-1998 El Ninio episode, for example, 1.5 million km2 of Amazon forest-a third of the forest remaining in Amazonia-was desiccated to the point of flammability. Most of the forest didn't catch fire because it is far from the agricultural frontier. With the paving of >4000 km of highway into the core region of Amazonia, large-scale forest burning will follow, as will 100,000-180,000 km2 of additional deforestation (Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental na Amazonia and Instituto Socioambiental 2000; Nepstad et al. 2000). This scale of threat to Amazonia and other large tropical forest formations must frame our approach to conservation. Even if, for the sake of ar-

Health policy-making in central and eastern Europe: lessons from the inaction on injuries?

The burden of disease due to injuries has elicited virtually no public health response in the countries of central and eastern Europe, even though injuries have long been a much greater problem in the east of Europe than in the west, with children especially affected. This paper seeks to identify factors that have inhibited policy development on this topic and to draw lessons for health policy development in this region more generally. Several factors emerge. Deaths from injuries have had low visibility. Data have not been assembled in a way that would facilitate identification of the burden of disease that they constitute. Those organizations responsible for public health, whether within government or at local level, were typically very weak with little capacity either to identify the nature and scale of threats to the health of their populations or to develop strategies to address them. There was uncertainty about ownership, with fragmentation of responsibility but no tradition of intersectoral working. Non-governmental organizations, which have placed injuries on the health policy agenda in the west, are weak or non-existent. International donors, who could have had a role, have focused on issues such as health care reform. This analysis provides a potential framework for examining policy responses, or lack thereof, to other health challenges in this region. It highlights the need for a better understanding of the potential for using available data, which, in turn, requires a major strengthening of capacity. However, in many countries, there is a need for new ways of working, involving a broadening of the sense of ownership, with clearly designated responsibilities but designed in ways that encourage rather than inhibit intersectoral action. There is also a need to develop non-governmental organizations that have sufficient capacity to undertake their own analyses and to place issues on the agenda.

Validation of the structure of the perceived meanings of cancer pain inventory.

This study examined the structure of a newly developed instrument measuring the meaning of cancer pain for Taiwanese patients. The Perceived Meanings of Cancer Pain Inventory (PMCPI) was developed based on Lazarus's cognitive theory of emotion and on findings from qualitative interviews. The 27-item PMCPI contains six scales: loss, threat, challenge, blame-others, blame-self, and spiritual awareness. Two hundred cancer patients from three hospitals in northern Taiwan who were experiencing pain were included in the study. A series of confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to test the fit of specified measurement models. The results indicated that only the loss, threat, challenge and spiritual awareness scales possessed good construct validity, while blame-other and blame-self failed to show a satisfactory fit with the data. Correlation coefficients among the scales were also estimated. Parallel-item testing demonstrated that the items of each valid scale had the same factor loading and error variance.

Development of the Pain Appraisal Inventory: Psychometric Properties

OBJECTIVE: To discuss the development, content validity, internal consistency and factor structure of a Pain Appraisal Inventory (PAI).DESIGN: A PAI was constructed with a threat appraisal scale and a challenge appraisal scale. Content validity was demonstrated with a panel of health experts. A sample of 309 individuals participated in a random community survey about troublesome pain in the two weeks preceding the telephone interview.RESULTS: Confirmatory factor analysis produced a two‐factor structure comprising threat appraisal and challenge appraisal. Cronbach′s alphas were 0.86 for the threat scale and 0.81 for the challenge scale. Threat appraisal was correlated with respondents′ scores on the McGill Pain Questionnaire, the Pain Disability Index, and measures of pain intensity and emotional upset due to pain. Challenge appraisal was reported by only 14% of the sample and limited the usefulness of statistical analyses for this variable.CONCLUSIONS: Appraisal of pain may be key to the underlying overall adjustment of an individual to pain. The PAI distinguishes between threat and challenge appraisal of pain, and may have considerable utility for the measurement of appraisal in experimental, epidemiological and clinical pain research.

Value Priority Differences across Levels of Nuclear Threat Concern

(1992). Value Priority Differences across Levels of Nuclear Threat Concern. The Journal of Social Psychology: Vol. 132, No. 4, pp. 539-541.

Psychometric Evaluation of the Clinical Stress Questionnaire (CSQ)

The purpose of the Clinical Stress Questionnaire (CSQ) was to assess the appraisal of stress in the clinical experience of nursing students as threatening or challenging. The CSQ consists of a 20-item Likert scale and some open-ended questions. The instrument was administered to 246 female nursing students from 7 different colleges and universities in Pennsylvania after their first day of their medical-surgical clinical experience. Alpha coefficients of .85 and .84 were obtained for the challenge and threat scales, respectively. Factor analysis supported construct validity. A paired T-test indicated that the students were significantly more challenged than threatened. However, the students' comments focused more on the negative aspects of stress and threat.