Objective-To describe the daily lives of rural pregnant women who smoked during pregnancy, with a focus on their sources of stress and the compounding effects of intimate partner violence (IPV).Design-A qualitative study using content analysis of research nurse's telephone logs from a large smoking cessation randomized controlled trial (N = 695) in which 33% of the sample (n = 227) experienced IPV in the past year.Participants-Fifty pregnant women, 25 who had experienced IPV in the past year and 25 who had never experienced IPV, were randomly selected from those who received a nurse-delivered telephone intervention for smoking cessation (n = 345). The mean age of the sample was 22 years, and the majority were White and living in a married-like relationship. Results-Women experiencing IPV discussed certain stressors significantly more often than non-abused women. These stressors included finances, lack of social support, legal issues, transportation issues, and abuse by the intimate partner and others.Conclusion-Health care providers need to recognize that intimate partner violence creates a stress which can compound the stressors of pregnancy and poverty in rural areas. Offering these women a chance to talk about their lives can help them not only to locate necessary resources, but also to break down the barriers of isolation.
Psychological measures (a term we use interchangeably in this chapter with psychological tests, assessment instruments, and scales) that are reliable and valid are critical for conducting research, engaging in clinical practice, and evaluating programs. Hence, the burden is on professionals who conduct research or engage in clinical practice in any world region to ensure that the psychological tests they use have appropriate reliability and validity for the groups from whom they obtain clinical and research data (Kendall, Butcher, & Holmbeck, 1999;Lambert, Rowan, Rowan, & Mount, 2014). Use of psychological tests with questionable reliability and validity can be one of the weakest links in research (Kline, 2005). Such tests make the task of drawing appropriate clinical and research inferences virtually impossible. Because research and clinical practice inform one another, inaccurate testrelated research findings can negatively affect the accuracy of information social scientists use to guide practice and research.
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