measured-response

Among end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients on hemodialysis, death from withdrawal from life-sustaining dialysis is increasingly common. The present study's objective was to examine depression as a potential risk factor for hemodialysis withdrawal. Two hundred forty ESRD hemodialysis (133 male and 107 female) patients were followed for an average of 4 years after depression symptom assessment. Of these, 18% withdrew from dialysis. Using multivariate survival analysis and after controlling for the effects of age (p = .001) and clinical variables, the authors found that level of depression symptoms was a unique and significant predictive risk factor for the subsequent decision to withdraw from dialysis (p = .05). The potential impact that depression may have on the decision to withdraw from hemodialysis should be considered by health care providers, patient families, and patients. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)

Associations between smoking behavior and polymorphisms in the dopaminergic genes (DAT1 and DRD2) were tested by using within- and between-family measures of allelic transmission in 2,448 young adults from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. The 9-repeat allele of the dopamine transporter gene polymorphism (DAT1) was inversely associated with smoking in samples that included all subjects and only those who had initiated smoking, accounting for approximately 1% of the variance. Never smokers and current nonsmokers had an excess transmission of the 9-repeat allele compared with regular smokers, suggesting a protective effect of the 9-repeat allele, which is hypothesized to alter synaptic dopamine levels. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)

The Practice Notes section is intended to keep readers informed about health education practice around the country. It is an attempt to spread the word about exemplary strategies, initiatives, and programs and share successes in overcoming obstacles or challenges. Periodically, articles presenting perspectives on practice-related issues are also included in Practice Notes.

This article presents a review of 14 case studies and articles of research ethics issues in the conduct of environmental and public health research with Native American and other indigenous populations. The purpose of this review is to highlight new practices in the ethical conduct of research with native community populations. The findings from this review can promote more dialogue and policy development on the issue of community protections in research. Formal guidelines exist in ethical codes for individual rights as human subjects, but there is a lack of development on community rights in the ethics of research. This review illustrates how communitybased participatory research practices can provide working guidelines that can overcome past research harms. More important, the compilations of guidelines offer tested field methods for improving the ethical conduct of research with native community populations.

(No abstract is available for this citation)

Prisons and prison inmates present important targets for HIV/AIDS prevention interventions. Inmates often have histories of high-risk behavior that place them in danger of contracting HIV/AIDS, and rates of HIV/AIDS tend to be much higher in this population. The goal of this studywas to assess the effectiveness of a prison-based HIV/AIDS intervention to change attitudes toward HIV prevention, norms supporting HIV prevention, perceived behavioral control (i.e., self-efficacy) for HIV prevention behaviors, and intentions to engage in HIV prevention behaviors postrelease. The intervention also had the goal of encouraging inmates to become HIV/AIDS peer educators. The intervention appeared most successful at influencing beliefs and behaviors related to peer education and somewhat successful at influencing beliefs and intentions related to condom use. Analyses also showed some significant differences in effectiveness by race/ethnicity. Results are discussed from the perspectives of both research and practice with regard to prison-based HIV prevention efforts.

This study assessed the antecedents of continued use of an education program to prevent passive smoking in infants. It consists of a booklet for parents and a manual for health professionals describing a five-step procedure for discussing passive smoking. Aquestionnairewas sent to 67 managers, 670 nurses, and 335 physiciansworking in well-baby clinics (response rate: 70%, 53%, 47% respectively). Questions concerned the completeness of use, level of institutionalization, and characteristics of the organization, the user, and the dissemination strategy. Seventy-one percent of nurses and42% of physiciansworked with the program. They foremost provided the first three steps of the five-step procedure. Physicians' completeness of usewas related to their perceived responsibility in providing this education, and nurses' use was related to their perceived self-efficacy, responsibility, training attendance, participation in the adoption decision, and level of institutionalization. Diffusion efforts should focus on improving the completeness of use and level of institutionalization.

Five percent of typical oral contraceptive users experience an unintended pregnancy every year. Inconsistent use of oral contraception may be a leading contributor to the high rate of unintended pregnancy among oral contraceptive users. Previous medical research also suggests that anxiety may play a role in medication compliance, yet no known studies have examined the relationship between anxiety and oral contraceptive use. To test this relationship, the authors analyze data from the National Survey of Family Growth Cycle V (NSFG-V), restricting their sample to sexually activewomen currently taking oral contraceptives. They find thatwomenwho report multiple episodes of anxiety lasting at least 6 months have a greater probability of inconsistent use. The authors suggest goals for future research and discuss the role of health care professionals in addressing oral contraception compliance in light of their findings.

The objectives of this study were to describe opportunities for student physical activity (PA) in elementary schools and to identify factors in the school environment associated with higher PA opportunity. Self-report questionnaires were completed by school principals and physical education teachers in 277 schools (88% response) in metropolitan Montreal. Correlates of opportunity were identified using ordinal logistic regression. There was substantial variation in PA opportunities between schools. Higher opportunity was associated with role modeling of PA by school principals, their interest in increasing PA through links to the municipality, adequate financial and human resources, access to school sports facilities, adequate space for storing student sports equipment, and suburban location. There is both the need and the potential for intervention to increase PAopportunities in elementary schools. Addressing barriers related to resources and access to sports facilities may help reduce disparities between schools in opportunities for students to engage in PA.

This article examines the applicability of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) with the addition of the selfefficacy construct in the understanding of the motivation to obtain an initial screeningmammogramamong Cypriot women. The study sample consisted of 293women aged 40 to 65 years, asymptomatic of breast cancer, and with no previous mammography experience. The study took place at the General Hospital of Nicosia in Cyprus. The results of the study provided support of the TPB with the addition of self-efficacy in an international setting. Self-efficacy was the strongest predictor of intention. Other predictors of intention included educational level, time of last clinical breast examination, and age. The study also provided some empirical support of the distinction between self-efficacy and perceived behavioral control. Researchers may want to include self-efficacy in addition to the TPB and other demographic characteristics in future applications to more fully explain behavioral outcomes.

Authors examined the logic (or the implicit theory) underlying 16 abstinence-only-until-marriage programs in Texas (50% of all programs funded under the federal welfare reform legislation during 2001 and 2002). Defined as a set of propositions regarding the relationship between program activities and their intended outcomes, program staff's implicit theories were summarized and compared to (a) data from studies on adolescent sexual behavior, (b) a theory-based model of youth abstinent behavior, and (c) preliminary findings from the national evaluation of Title V programs. Authors interviewed 62 program directors and instructors and employed selected principles of grounded theory to analyze interview data. Findings indicated that abstinence education staff could clearly articulate the logic guiding program activity choices. Comparisons between interviewdata and a theory-based model of adolescent sexual behavior revealed striking similarities. Implications of these findings for conceptualizing and evaluating abstinence-only-until-marriage (or similar) programs are examined.

The American Legacy Foundation funded 13 state health departments for their Statewide Youth Movement Against Tobacco Use in September 2000. Its goal was to create statewide tobacco control initiatives implemented with youth leadership. The underlying theory behind these initiatives was that tobacco control efforts can best be accomplished by empowering youth. To evaluate these initiatives, the authors developed a conceptual framework for youth empowerment that was used as a guide in developing standardized cross-site measures. This article describes the domains and attributes used to operationalize psychological empowerment as an outcome of youth involvement in these initiatives and presents results of our two-stage structural equation modeling. We conclude with a summary of lessons learned to date and recommendations for applying these findings to work in the field.

(No abstract is available for this citation)

Introduces the new Health Psychology series "Evidence-Based Treatment Reviews." Psychologists struggle continuously with the tension between the general implications of research conducted in their treatment area and the often unique needs and treatment possibilities for their individual patients. Recent concerns about this struggle in psychology have led to the initiation of an American Psychological Association presidential taskforce to propose an evidence-based policy: Evidence-Based Psychology Practice (EBPP). This struggle is not new. Medicine, similarly, has been dealing with the issue of how to translate research findings into evidence-based assessments and treatments. The process of joining our research with our practice, known as Evidence-Based Medicine, will be the cornerstone of a new series of articles in Health Psychology, entitled "Evidence-Based Treatment Reviews." Evidence-Based Behavioral Medicine is an extension of the Evidence-Based Medicine movement that identified the necessity of critically evaluating research to inform clinical practice (Rosenberg & Donald, 1995). In addition to mentoring researchers in presenting their findings in a more user-friendly style (e.g., Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials, or CONSORT, guidelines; Altman, Schulz, Moher, Egger, Davidoff, Elbourne, et al., 2001), teaching clinicians how to review the evidence (e.g., Evidence Based Medicine Tool Kit), and compiling and summarizing the existing evidence for public consumption (e.g., the Cochrane Collaboration), it makes sense to integrate these efforts by presenting research reviews with clinician commentary in our professional journals as has already been done by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA, e.g., DeAngelis & Fontanarosa, 2002; Levinson & DeAngelis, 2002). We seek to add to the health psychology evidence base by including two articles for each topic chosen: an Evidence Review and a Clinician's Comment. For this series, we envision that three or four evidence-based reviews will be published per year in Health Psychology and that each review will be accompanied by a three- or four-page commentary by a clinician to aid in the application of the research to a clinical practice. In this format, we hope to capture both the state of the clinical science and the challenging art of translating it into clinical practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)

Meta-analyses support the effectiveness of behavioral interventions for the treatment of insomnia, although few have systematically evaluated the relative efficacy of different treatment modalities or the relation of old age to sleep outcomes. In this meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (k = 23), moderate to large effects of behavioral treatments on subjective sleep outcomes were found. Evaluation of the moderating effects of behavioral intervention type (i.e., cognitive-behavioral treatment, relaxation, behavioral only) revealed similar effects for the 3 treatment modalities. Both middle-aged adults and persons older than 55 years of age showed similar robust improvements in sleep quality, sleep latency, and wakening after sleep onset. A research agenda is recommended to examine the mechanisms of action of behavioral treatments on sleep with increased attention to the high prevalence of insomnia in older individuals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)