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PubMed2002

What is the Revised Fear Survey Schedule for Children measuring?

The Fear Survey Schedule for Children-Revised (FSSC-R) is a widely used self-report questionnaire that purports to measure the number of fears and the overall level of fearfulness in children. A number of studies have shown that the ten most common childhood fears can be found on the Danger and Death subscale of the FSSC-R, with upwards of 50% of children endorsing such fears. However, some researchers (e.g., H. McCathie & S.H. Spence, 1991; Behaviour Research and Therapy, 29, 495-502) have questioned the validity of these findings, suggesting that these items do not reflect actual childhood fears that children have or experience on a daily or regular basis. Rather, they suggest that children are responding to these fear items as if they were actually occurring to them in the here and now. The current study examined the occurrence of five Danger and Death fears from the FSSC-R (i.e., "Not being able to breathe", "Being hit by a car or truck", "Falling from high places", "Bombing attacks or being invaded", and "Fire or getting burned") in a sample of normal school children aged eight to 12 years (N=102). More specifically, we used three different methods to asses these fears: (1). prevalence as determined by the standard FSSC-R procedure, (2). prevalence as determined by a fear list procedure, and (3). actual occurrence or prevalence of these fears in the past week, as determined by a diary method. Results indicated that while these fears ranked high when using the standard FSSC-R procedure, they were considerably less common when using the fear list procedure, and had a low probability of actual occurrence on a daily basis, as well as possessing a short duration and low intensity. Implications for the assessment of fears and the use of self-report measures like the FSSC-R are briefly discussed.

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Using nitrogen-15 to quantify vegetative buffer effectiveness for sequestering nitrogen in runoff.

Previous studies have observed higher levels of soluble nutrients leaving vegetative buffers than entering them, suggesting that the buffers themselves are acting as a source rather than a sink by releasing previously stored nutrients. This study used 98 atom % (15)N-labeled KNO(3) at a rate of 5 kg ha(-1) to quantify buffer efficiency for sequestering new inputs of NO(-)(3)-N in an extensively grazed irrigated pasture system. Buffer treatments consisted of an 8-m buffer, a 16-m buffer, and a nonbuffered control. Regardless of the form of runoff N (NO(-)(3), NH(+)(4), or dissolved organic nitrogen [DON]), more (15)N was lost from the nonbuffered treatments than from the buffered treatments. The majority of the N attenuation was by vegetative uptake. Over the course of the study, the 8-m buffer decreased NO(-)(3)-(15)N load by 28% and the 16-m buffer decreased load by 42%. For NH(+)(4)-(15)N, the decrease was 34 and 48%, and for DON-(15)N, the decrease was 21 and 9%. Although the buffers were effective overall, the majority of the buffer impact occurred in the first four weeks after (15)N application, with the buffered plots attenuating nearly twice as much (15)N as the nonbuffered plots. For the remainder of the study, buffer effect was not as marked; there was a steady release of (15)N, particularly NO(-)(3)- and DON-(15)N, from the buffers into the runoff. This suggests that for buffers to be sustainable for N sequestration there is a need to manage buffer vegetation to maximize N demand and retention.

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