Psychometric properties of a short form of the Adolescent Stress Questionnaire (ASQ-14).

Background: Exposure to minor stressors is related to a range of emotional and behavioral problems in adolescents. The purpose of this study was to develop a screening instrument for assessing adolescent stressors.

Method: The Adolescent Stress Questionnaire (ASQ-14) was tested on a sample of 561 adolescents aged between 12 and 18.

The influence of contextual variables on judgments about patients and their pain.

Objective: Professional judgments about persistent pain are influenced by contextual variables, which are features relating to the patient, the assessor, or the broader situation. Such judgments directly inform assessment and treatment and therefore represent an important area of research. While current formulations of persistent pain adopt a biopsychosocial framework, contextual variables relating to psychosocial information have not been well examined in the literature.

Internalized stigma in people living with chronic pain.

Unlabelled: Although persistent pain occurs in a sociocultural context, the influence of personal devaluation and invalidation is often neglected. As such, the present study sought to consider whether individuals' experience, perception, or anticipation of negative social reactions to their pain may become internalized and affect the self. To examine this issue, 92 adults with chronic pain responded to a questionnaire exploring the presence of internalized stigma and its association with a range of psychological consequences.

The lifestyle of our kids (LOOK) project: outline of methods.

This methods paper outlines the overall design of a community-based multidisciplinary longitudinal study with the intent to stimulate interest and communication from scientists and practitioners studying the role of physical activity in preventive medicine. In adults, lack of regular exercise is a major risk factor in the development of chronic degenerative diseases and is a major contributor to obesity, and now we have evidence that many of our children are not sufficiently active to prevent early symptoms of chronic disease. The lifestyle of our kids (LOOK) study investigates how early physical activity contributes to health and development, utilizing a longitudinal design and a cohort of eight hundred and thirty 7-8-year-old (grade 2) school children followed to age 11-12 years (grade 6), their average family income being very close to that of Australia.