Research on stress and its influence on health and well-being has flourished for several decades, examining as predictors such psychosocial variables as personality and coping. This work now often targets multiethnic samples. Because many potential participants lack facility in English, a need exists for translations of measures into other languages. We translated 6 instruments into Spanish and studied their characteristics. Of these, 3 were measures of personality qualities: the Life Orientation Test--Revised (Scheier, Carver, & Bridges, 1994), the Behavioral Inhibition/Behavioral Activation Scales (Carver & White, 1994), and the Measure of Body Apperception (Carver et al., 1998). The others were the Brief COPE (Carver, 1997), the Center for Epidemiological Studies--Depression Scale (Radloff, 1977), and an abbreviated version of the Profile of Mood States (McNair, Lorr, & Droppelman, 1971). Correlations between English and Spanish versions in bilingual samples were all above. 72, except for the COPE's Behavioral Disengagement scale. Alpha reliabilities of the Spanish versions were comparable to those of the English versions. Correlations among measures in a sample of cancer patients were similar across languages.
Body image is often thought of in terms of physical appearance, but there is also a body image pertaining to integrity, wholeness, and normal functioning. People who are greatly concerned about either aspect of their body image are vulnerable to poorer psychosocial adjustment when confronting treatment for breast cancer. The poorer adjustment takes a different form, however, depending on the nature of the patient's body-image concern.
Background. Recent studies indicate that breast cancer patients do not usually experience the devastating psychological consequences once viewed as inevitable. However, some adjust to the disease more poorly than others. This study examined the personality trait of optimism versus pessimism as a predictor of adjustment over the first year, postsurgery. Methods. Seventy women with early stage breast cancer reported on their general optimism‐pessimism at diagnosis. One day before surgery, and at 3‐month, 6‐month, and 12‐month follow‐ups, they reported their subjective well‐being (mood scales and a measure of satisfaction with life). At follow‐ups, they also rated their sex lives, indicated how much physical discomfort was interfering with their daily activities, and reported on thought intrusion. Results. Pessimism displayed poorer adjustment at each time point by all measures except interference from pain. Even controlling for previous well‐being, pessimism predicted poorer subsequent well‐being, suggesting that pessimism represents a vulnerability to a negative change in adjustment. In contrast, effects of pessimism on quality of sex life and thought intrusion were not incremental over time. Additional analyses indicated that effects of the optimism‐pessimism measure were captured relatively well by a single item from the scale. Conclusions. A sense of pessimism about one's life enhances a woman's risk for adverse psychological reactions to the diagnosis of, and treatment for, breast cancer. This finding suggests the potential desirability of assessing this quality informally in patients, to serve as a warning sign regarding the patient's well‐being during the period surrounding and following surgery. Cancer 1994; 73:1213–20.
Two models of cognitive determinants of distress under adversity were tested in the experiences of two samples of newly treated breast cancer patients (n s = 144 and 202). One model emphasizes the role of perceptions of personal control in subjective well-being; the other model emphasizes expectancies of the occurrence of desired outcomes. In this research, the outcome addressed was remaining free of cancer in the future. In these two samples, beliefs about control over remaining free of cancer played no role in predicting distress, although expectancy of remaining cancer free did. Discussion focuses on conceptual boundaries on the concept of control, how difficult it is to assess control separately from expectancy regarding the desired outcome, and how conceptual clarity requires such a separation.
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