Mindfulness may be important to consider and include in models of stress, coping, and resilience in firefighters. Future studies should examine the prospective relationship between mindfulness and health in firefighters and others in high-stress occupations.

No abstract

The study emphasizes the importance of distinguishing the threshold for judging situations as risky from sensitivity to risk-relevant information in understanding individual differences in women's risk judgments. Both processes may be important to consider when developing interventions to reduce women's risk for sexual victimization.

This study evaluated the effects of a sexual victimization history and the contextual features of sexual activity and alcohol use on the effectiveness of women's responses to 44 written vignettes describing diverse dating and social situations. One hundred and one undergraduate women reported their history of sexual victimization and provided written descriptions of how they would respond to each vignette. Experts in the sexual violence research area then evaluated the effectiveness of these responses in decreasing risk of having an unwanted sexual experience, meaning one in which the woman is verbally or physically coerced into having sexual contact of any kind with a man. Results revealed that past victimization moderated the influence of the situations' contextual features on women's response effectiveness. Specifically, as the presence of sexual activity increased in the situations, the response effectiveness of more severely victimized women increased less than nonvictimized women. In addition, as the presence of alcohol increased in the situations the response effectiveness of more severely victimized women decreased more than that of nonvictimized women.

No abstract

This study tested measurement invariance between Hispanic (n ϭ 226) and White (n ϭ 278) college students' responses to a well-validated measure of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Participants completed the PTSD Checklist-Civilian Version (PCL-C; Weathers, Litz, Herman, Juska, & Keane, 1993); however, trauma histories were not assessed, nor were responses to the PCL-C indexed to a specific traumatic event. Eight models were tested using within-groups confirmatory factor analysis (CFA); 3 models (D.

Institutional review boards assume that questionnaires asking about "sensitive" topics (e.g., trauma and sex) pose more risk to respondents than seemingly innocuous measures (e.g., cognitive tests). We tested this assumption by asking 504 undergraduates to answer either surveys on trauma and sex or measures of cognitive ability, such as tests of vocabulary and abstract reasoning. Participants rated their positive and negative emotional reactions and the perceived benefits and mental costs of participating; they also compared their study-related distress with the distress arising from normal life stressors. Participants who completed trauma and sex surveys, relative to participants who completed cognitive measures, rated the study as resulting in higher positive affect and as having greater perceived benefits and fewer mental costs. Although participants who completed trauma and sex surveys reported slightly higher levels of negative emotion than did participants who completed cognitive measures, averages were very low for both groups, and outliers were rare. All participants rated each normal life stressor as more distressing than participating in the study. These results suggest that trauma and sex surveys pose minimal risk.

Homeless women are at increased risk for problematic alcohol use and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). While coping motives have been shown to mediate the relationship between PTSD symptoms and alcohol problems in victims of sexual assault and domestic violence, it is unknown whether this relationship is evident in other trauma-exposed populations. The focus of this study was to examine whether drinking to cope mediated the relationship between PTSD symptoms and current alcohol use in a group of homeless, ethnically diverse women. Twenty-three women were recruited from local shelters in a southwestern community and asked to complete measures assessing their current alcohol use, drinking motives, and PTSD symptoms. Results revealed that drinking to cope mediated the relationship between PTSD symptoms and current alcohol use. This finding supports the theory that homeless women may benefit from treatment interventions that address both their substance use and trauma issues.