a b s t r a c tThe Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), Numerical Rating Scale (NRS), Verbal Rating Scale (VRS), and the Faces Pain Scale-Revised (FPS-R) are among the most commonly used measures of pain intensity in clinical and research settings. Although evidence supports their validity as measures of pain intensity, few studies have compared them with respect to the critical validity criteria of responsivity, and no experiment has directly compared all 4 measures in the same study. The current study compared the relative validity of VAS, NRS, VRS, and FPS-R for detecting differences in painful stimulus intensity and differences between men and women in response to experimentally induced pain. One hundred twenty-seven subjects underwent four 20-second cold pressor trials with temperature order counterbalanced across 1°C, 3°C, 5°C, and 7°C and rated pain intensity using all 4 scales. Results showed statistically significant differences in pain intensity between temperatures for each scale, with lower temperatures resulting in higher pain intensity. The order of responsivity was as follows: NRS, VAS, VRS, and FPS-R. However, there were relatively small differences in the responsivity between scales. A statistically significant sex main effect was also found for the NRS, VRS, and FPS-R. The findings are consistent with previous studies supporting the validity of each scale. The most support emerged for the NRS as being both (1) most responsive and (2) able to detect sex differences in pain intensity. The results also provide support for the validity of the scales for use in Portuguese samples. Ó

The study aims to develop and assess metric proprieties of the Portuguese version of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. A sequential sample includes 1322 participants diagnosed with cancer, stroke, epilepsy, coronary heart disease, diabetes, myotonic dystrophy, obstructive sleep apnoea, depression and a non-disease group, which completed the HADS. The first step includes translation, retroversion, inspection for lexical equivalence and content validity, and cognitive debriefing. Then we reproduce oblique exploratory factor analysis and use confirmatory factor analysis. We explore the sensibility of the questionnaire. The validation process of the Portuguese HADS version shows metric properties similar to those in international studies, suggesting that it measures the same constructs, in the same way, as the original HADS form.

The authors investigated the effectiveness of a 5-week hope-based intervention designed to enhance hope, life satisfaction, self-worth, mental health and academic achievement in middle school students. The study includes a sample of 31 students from a community school, a matched comparison group of 31 students, and 2 secondary groupsguardians and teachers of the students' intervention group. Students completed a questionnaire packet that included demographic information, the Portuguese versions of the Children's Hope Scale, Students' Life Satisfaction Scale, Mental Health and Self-Worth Scales. Academic achievement was obtained from school records. At baseline, groups are statistically similar on the variables of interest. At post-test the intervention group had enhanced hope, life satisfaction and self-worth. In the intervention group, benefits in hope, life satisfaction and self-worth were maintained at the 18-month follow up. Results suggest that a brief hope intervention can increase psychological strengths, and participants continue to benefit up to 1-year and 6-months later.

No abstract

Academic achievement, Children and adolescents, Mental health, Positive psychology variables,

Num primeiro artigo (Galinha & Ribeiro, 2005) discutimos os conceitos implicados na Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; . O passo seguinte, já proposto no referido artigo, consiste em adaptar a escala à população portuguesa.A PANAS surge da necessidade de desenvolver medidas breves, fáceis de administrar e váli-das, para avaliar o afecto positivo e negativo . Com este fim, os autores desenvolveram duas medidas com 10 itens, que incluem a lista de afectos positivos e a lista de afectos negativos que constituem a PANAS.Se existem termos com características marcadamente culturais, os que expressam afecto estão certamente incluídos neste grupo. No presente estudo, preocupámo-nos em respeitar as características particulares do conceito de afecto, mais sujeito às diferenças linguísticas, culturais, e contextuais do que a generalidade dos constructos psicológicos.No estudo de adaptação da versão para português, ao invés de traduzirmos os 20 termos descritores dos afectos que constituem a PANAS reduzida, recuámos um pouco na metodologia e desenvolvemos um processo similar ao da construção da escala original, replicando a metodologia seguida pelos autores da escala, procurando chegar assim aos 20 descritores das emoções positivas e negativas, que fossem as mais representativas do léxico emocional dos portugueses e que, simultaneamente, fossem fiéis à estrutura da escala original. MÉTODO ParticipantesPara seguir os passos dos autores da escala, escolhemos uma amostra de estudantes universitá-

The main objective of this study was to build a model, which includes personal and social factors, that helps to highlight factors that promote health-related quality of Life (HRQoL) in children and in adolescents. A sample of 3195 children and adolescents was acquired from 5th and 7th graders from all five Portuguese regions. In this study three independent latent variables were specified – Physical, Psychological and Social and two dependent latent variables were measured: Health behavior and Quality of Life. The integrative model was composed by different components: (1) health-related quality of life, integrated by 8 dimensions from KIDSCREEN-52; (2) health behavior, (3) variables related to physical health; (4) variables related to social health; (5) variables related to psychological health. As results were found strong correlation between psychological dimensions and self-esteem and other factors and a structural equation model was developed. The model presented a RMSEA index of .08. Similarly, adjustment levels for the CFI, NFI and IFI vary above or around .90, which suggests a good adjustment for the hypothesized model. The model presented significant qui-square.This study showed that in all the samples studied, the psychological variables were those that contributed at a superior level to HRQoL.

We reviewed current knowledge about cumulative and differential consequences of general anesthesia, surgery and hospitalization upon cognitive, academic, emotional and sociobehavioral development in children. Our strategy was to search the databases Pub Med and PsycINFO for all articles published between 1990 and May 2002. Based on the abstracts, we included all articles that related in any way to our subject of interest. Analysis of the articles showed preoperative anxiety as the main contributing factor to perioperative negative developmental effects. These were generally limited in duration and reversible. Research in this area tries to investigate predictors of increased anxiety, as well as the efficacy of different interventional programs for reduction of preoperative anxiety. We found no studies attempting to differentiate the relative influences of 'anesthetic stress', 'surgical stress' and 'hospitalization stress' on 'negative outcomes', 'areas of development affected' or 'duration of effects'. There are very few studies on academic and cognitive consequences. There is a need for more research in this area to provide useful guidelines for clinicians, to identify risk situations and to prevent negative outcomes.