Emotional reactivity and debilitating beliefs during hospitalization predict future adjustment to first myocardial infarction in men.

Research efforts are being made to identify personality and cognitive variables predictive of poor adjustment following myocardial infarction. Sixty-two male patients were examined after a first and uncomplicated myocardial infarction to determine whether dispositional emotional reactivity and debilitating beliefs measured during hospitalization can predict work engagement, social activities involvement, and ambulation/independence six months later. A structural model with direct paths between emotional reactivity, debilitating beliefs, and the above outcomes, as well as partial mediation of emotional distress and illness preoccupation, was tested using the CALIS procedure.

Estimation of slowly changing components of physiological signals.

A method for the estimation of slowly changing components of physiological signals is presented in this communication. The method is based on a sequential approximation of slowly changing components by a low-order polynomial function. The polynomial coefficients are obtained by minimizing the distance between the expected zero crossing density (ZCD) value of the fast components of the physiological signal and the estimated ZCD value of these components.

Emotional reactivity, defensiveness, and ambulatory cardiovascular response at work.

Objective: To examine whether individual differences in dispositional emotional reactivity (ER), denoting a proneness to sustained emotional arousal in the face of stressful events, are associated with tension arousal and cardiovascular (CV) response at work, and whether this association is modified by defensive coping.

Method: Eighty-two male normotensive industrial workers participated in the study. ER was measured by the Emotional Reactivity Scale (Melamed, 1994).

Disease evaluated on return-to-work examinations: aviation ground personnel compared to other workers.

Aviation ground personnel are subjected to a wide range of chemical and physical exposures that may lead the occupational physician to see a different spectrum of morbidity in the airport compared to other settings. It is essential to determine the most common medical problems in airport ground personnel in order to identify possible work-related conditions and in order to set the priorities for establishing health promotion programs and training occupational physicians. We compiled the diagnoses in 1000 consecutive visits of ground workers to the airport clinic for return-to-work examinations, and compared them to 7000 workers seen in general occupational clinics.

The effects of chronic industrial noise exposure on urinary cortisol, fatigue and irritability: a controlled field experiment.

This quasiexperimental field study explored the effect of noise attenuation on urinary cortisol excretion (sampled three times, at 6:30 and 10:30 AM and 1:30 PM) and reported fatigue and postwork irritability among 35 healthy industrial workers chronically exposed to high ambient noise levels (> 85 dB [A]) without using ear protectors. The results indicated that under conditions of chronic noise exposure the cortisol level at the end of the workshift was high and almost reached the morning level. This elevation in cortisol excretion was accompanied by high levels of accumulated fatigue and postwork irritability.

Objective and subjective work monotony: effects on job satisfaction, psychological distress, and absenteeism in blue-collar workers.

The relation of objective work conditions (work underload, repetitive or varied work) and subjective monotony to job satisfaction, psychological distress, and sickness absence was examined in 1,278 male and female workers. Subjective monotony was moderately related to the objective work conditions. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that the effects on all outcomes were partially mediated by subjective monotony and were also directly related to repetitive work and work underload.

Evaluating the discriminatory power of a multiple logistic regression model.

Various measures for estimating the goodness-of-fit of the multiple logistic regression (MLR) model have been suggested, although there is no clear consensus as to which measure is most suitable. In this paper, a simple measure of the discriminatory power of the fitted MLR model, based on maximization of Youden's J index (J*), is proposed and compared with several goodness-of-fit statistics described previously. The relative effectiveness of the measure is illustrated using data from the Lipid Research Clinics Prevalence Study.