Biomedical subjects

Etienne Mullet

Publications and source records attributed to Etienne Mullet.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

How nursing personnel judge patients' pain.

The study examined how nurses, student nurses, and nurse's aides judge patients' level of pain from five indicators: facial grimacing, maintenance of abnormal body position, restriction of movement, complaints about pain, and signs of possible depression. In Toulouse, France, 214 participants were presented with 48 vignettes describing an elderly patient suffering from osteoarthritis who showed various levels of these signs. The three most important factors in judging pain were the difficulty in making social contact with the patient, the patient's avoidance of changing position, and her avoidance of movements. The nurses put more emphasis on the difficulty in making social contact than did the student nurses and nurse's aides. In all groups, each sign of pain contributed independently and additively to the level of pain that the patient was thought to be experiencing.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Eliciting utilities using functional methodology: people's disutilities for the adverse outcomes of cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the functional methodology of Norman H. Anderson in eliciting utilities for health outcomes. METHODS: Lay people in Tours, France, rated the undesirability of 40 scenarios of possible outcomes of cardiopulmonary resuscitation on individual linear scales (Study 1) or on a single long scale (Study 2). The outcomes were either 1 of 8 undesirable outcomes, combined with 1 of 5 likelihoods, or else complete recovery, combined with the complementary likelihood. RESULTS: The mean utilities were consistent with previous studies. On the individual level, the internal coherence of most participants' ratings - defined as the consistency and regularity of the graphic representation of their ratings - improved in Study 1 from their 1st to their 2nd rating. The single scale took less time, but allowed participants to disregard the information about likelihood. CONCLUSIONS: Functional methodology provides a powerful means of checking on the understanding and consistency of each person whose utilities are elicited.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Fear of pain associated with medical procedures and illnesses.

The study was aimed at determining the dimensions of fear of pain associated with medical procedures and the dimensions of fear of pain associated with illnesses and accidents on a sample composed of young, middle-aged and elderly persons. The participants were 573 adults (aged 26-94 years). They were presented with (a) the French adaptation of the ten medical fear items from the original FPQ plus 19 additional items, (b) the French adaptation of the 6 illness items from the original FPQ plus 49 additional items, and (c) an Exposure to Painful Situations Questionnaire. As regards the fear of medical procedures, a four-factor structure was identified: Examination and Care, Shots, Dental care, and Invasive procedures. Older participants, and less educated participants tended to show more fear of invasive procedures than younger participants, and more educated participants. As regards the fear of pain associated with illnesses, an eight-factor solution was found: Minor ailments, cramps, infections and abscesses, inflamed joints, colics, breaks, lesion of organs, and cancer and terminal illness. Older participants tended to show more fear of pain associated with minor ailments, inflamed joints, breaks, colic, and cramps than younger participants did. Previous exposure to pain resulted in a clear decrease in fear of pain associated with most of medical procedures, especially invasive procedures and shots.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Consulting a complementary and alternative medical practitioner: a systematic inventory of motives among French patients.

OBJECTIVES: To classify people's motives for seeking care from complementary and alternative medicine practitioners. Participants were asked about a wide variety of motives representing all eight motivational states described in Reversal Theory (RT): telic, paratelic, conformist, negativist, mastery, sympathy, autic, and alloic. DESIGN: Data from a convenience sample of 256 participants was examined using factorial techniques. RESULTS: Six factors were evidenced that were easily interpretable in the RT framework. Participants perceived their motives largely in terms of goals and means, and within this domain they focused more on the goals (i.e., telic motives were more important than paratelic ones). Paratelic motives were, however, not unimportant: they ranked third. Participants also perceived their motives in terms of rules and constraints, and within this domain they focused more on rules (i.e., conformist motives were more important than negativist ones). Participants, finally, perceived their motives in terms of the combined domains of relationships and exchanges with others, namely, acting out of concern for others (alloic sympathy) as well as for themselves (autic mastery). CONCLUSIONS: If the six-factor structure is proved applicable, the six corresponding subscales could be used for systematically comparing motives among different types of patients, regarding different types of therapies, and among patients from different cultures.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Changes in French people's misconceptions about hepatitis C, 1997-2003.

OBJECTIVE: The French health authorities instituted in 1999 a campaign to educate physicians, high-risk populations, and the public about hepatitis C (HC). To what extent has knowledge about HC increased among members of the French public? METHOD: A convenience sample of 706 French adults, aged 18 to 87, completed in 2003 a questionnaire designed to assess their knowledge of HC. Their responses were compared to those in 1997 of a different group of French adults on an identical questionnaire. RESULTS: Between 1997 and 2003, knowledge significantly improved on 13 of the 26 items for which strong expert-public differences were found in 1997 and significantly worsened on 3 items. CONCLUSIONS: France's public education campaign led to only a limited increase in knowledge about HC. Further public education is needed.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

Under what conditions is euthanasia acceptable to lay people and health professionals?

Euthanasia is legal only in the Netherlands and Belgium, but it is on occasion performed by physicians elsewhere. We recruited in France two convenience samples of 221 lay people and of 189 professionals (36 physicians, 92 nurses, 48 nurse's aides, and 13 psychologists) and asked them how acceptable it would be for a patient's physician to perform euthanasia in each of 72 scenarios. The scenarios were all combinations of three levels of the patient's life expectancy (3 days, 10 days, or 1 month), four levels of the patient's request for euthanasia (no request, unable to formulate a request because in a coma, some form of request, repeated formal requests), three of the family's attitude (do not uselessly prolong care, no opinion, try to keep the patient alive to the very end), and two of the patient's willingness to undergo organ donation (willing or not willing). We found that most lay people and health care professionals structure the factors in the patient scenarios in the same way: they assign most importance to the extent of requests for euthanasia by the patient and least importance (the lay people) or none (the health professionals) to the patient's willingness to donate organs. They also integrate the information from the different factors in the same way: the factors of patient request, patient life expectancy, and (for the lay people) organ donation are combined additively, and the family's attitude toward prolonging care interacts with patient request (playing a larger role when the patient can make no request). Thus we demonstrate a common cognitive foundation for future discussions, at the levels of both clinical care and public policy, of the conditions under which physician-performed euthanasia might be acceptable.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Perspective-taking judgments among young adults, middle-aged, and elderly people.

Perspective-taking judgments among young adults, middle-aged, and elderly people were examined. In 1 condition, participants were instructed to judge the likelihood of acceptance of a painkiller as a function of 3 cues: severity of the condition, potential side effects, and level of trust in the health care provider. In the other condition, participants were instructed to judge the likelihood of purchasing pieces of clothing. Judgments were given from 2 viewpoints: the viewpoint of another person known to place no importance on one of the 3 cues, and the viewpoint of another person known to place very great importance on this cue. The hypotheses were that elderly people would not, to the same extent as young adults, be likely to discount the impact of the "no-importance" cue, and to magnify the impact of the "very important" cue. In both judgment situations, the results support these hypotheses.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

Factor structure of cannabis related beliefs in adolescents.

This study evaluated 285 high school students (163 males, 122 females, with a mean age of 17.5+/-1.1 years) using a questionnaire for the diagnosis of cannabis use and dependence: 159 of them (55.7%) were cannabis users and, among users, 52 subjects (33%) met criteria for cannabis dependence. All subjects were assessed with a self-report questionnaire derived from the questionnaire of anticipatory, relief-oriented, and permissive beliefs for drug addiction elaborated by Tison and Hautekeete [J. Ther. Comport. Cogn. 2 (1998) 43] from the cognitive model of drug addiction formulated by Beck et al. [Cognitive Therapy of Substance Abuse. New York: Guilford Press, 1993]. A confirmatory factor analysis found that the three-category model for drug-related beliefs proposed by Beck et al. provided an adequate fit to the data. Regression analyses showed that permissive beliefs were the dominant predictor for cannabis use and that relief-oriented beliefs were the only predictor of cannabis dependence. These results represent an empirical validation of Beck's model.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

The Fear of Pain questionnaire: factor structure in samples of young, middle-aged and elderly European people.

The present study examined the factor structure of the Fear of Pain questionnaire in three independent samples composed of European young adults, middle-aged, and elderly people. Seven hundred and thirty one adults (426 females and 305 males) were presented with the French adaptation of the questionnaire (30 items) and with an Exposure to Painful Situations questionnaire that contained the same items as the Fear of Pain questionnaire and where participants were instructed to indicate all the painful situations they have experienced in the past. When tested on the whole set of 30 items, the correlated three-factor model evidenced in previous studies - Severe pain, Minor pain and Medical pain - poorly fit the data. When tested on a set of 15 two-item parcels, the fit of this model was much better but the correlations between factors were very high. When tested on a reduced set of 15 items, the model fit the data as well as when it was tested on the set of 15 parcels, and the correlations between the three factors were lower. The study also examined the link between previous exposure to pain and fear of pain. The hypothesis that previous "natural" exposure to pain should generally result in a decrease in fear of pain was supported by the data. For 14 items, the exposure effect was moderate to strong.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

Functional learning among children, adolescents, and young adults.

This study examined age-related differences in functional learning performance manifested among children, adolescents, and young adults placed in a two-cue ecology involving cues with direct relation and inverse relations with the criterion. On each trial, participants were instructed to consider the values taken by two cues, predict from these two values the value of a criterion, and finally examine the corresponding feedback value (i.e., the correct value of the criterion for this situation). The authors' hypotheses were that: (a) very few children under 11 years of age would be able to learn how to use the inverse relation cue for predicting the criterion, although they would be able to correctly use the direct relation cue; (b) most adolescents and young adults over 17 years of age would be able to learn how to use the inverse relation cue and combine it with the direct relation cue; and (c) adolescents between 11 and 17 years of age would show various levels of achievement. In general, these predictions were confirmed. Not until 11 years was a substantial proportion of participants (23%) able to reject the direct relation hypothesis and select the inverse relation hypothesis during learning.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

The impact of the preventive medical message on intention to change behavior.

Clinicians counsel patients to adopt behaviors to reduce health risks. We studied, in the case of coronary artery disease, the impact of those parts of the preventive medical message clinicians can vary. We asked 150 French people (86 aged 20-30, 64 aged 60-80) to rate their intention to adopt a specific behavior-take medication, change their diet, or start exercising-in 64 scenarios, composed of two severities of disease manifestations (angina pectoris or heart attack); four levels of its probability of occurrence (5, 10, 15, or 20%) and the associated time horizon (20, 15, 10, or 5 years, respectively); and two levels of controllability of the risk (entirely under your control or not much you can do to reduce it). We found that all four parts of the message had significant main effects and did not interact with each other. Older participants had greater intention to adopt preventive behavior when the time horizon was short and younger ones when it was long. The only gender effect was that older women were more sensitive to time horizon. The message's parts were combined additively. Participants intended to change behavior even when told this would be of little use. We concluded that clinicians should, when possible, discuss all key parts of the preventive medical message; that they can, however, focus on one without reducing the others' impact; and that, at least for outcomes such as angina and heart attack, they should speak of risk with young patients using a long time horizon, with old patients using a short time horizon.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Acceptability for French people of physician-assisted suicide.

Our aim was to understand better how people judge the acceptability of physician-assisted suicide (PAS). We found that, for people in France of all ages and for elderly people with life-threatening illnesses, acceptability is an additive combination of the number of requests for PAS, the patient's age, the amount of physical suffering, and the degree of curability of the illness, not only when judging for hypothetical patients, but also for their spouses and for themselves. PAS can be highly acceptable to people even when the patient does not satisfy all the criteria of legislation about PAS.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Performance schemata in dyadic competition and cooperation.

We examined performance schemata in dyadic competitive and cooperative situations, that is, the ways people perceive the relationship between performance level, capacity level, and degree of motivation in situations in which two people confront or collaborate with one another. In Experiment 1, 104 participants judged the possible performance of Person A, whose ability and motivation levels were communicated, competing against Person B, whose ability and motivation levels were also communicated. When judging A's performance, participants seemed first to assess the difficulty of the task facing A and second to integrate information relative to A according to a rule with changing parameters already proposed by Surber (1981a, 1981b). In Experiment 2, 140 participants judged either the possible performance of Person A in a cooperative situation or the possible performance of the A-B team using the same material. Results showed that people judge A's performance or the team's performance using a very simple additive rule.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2003

Stress and the urge to drink.

OBJECTIVE: Understanding why people drink alcohol is important for the health and safety of individuals and the public. The aim of this study was to examine from a cognitive point of view the hypothesized link between drinking and stress. METHODS: 25 scenarios were constructed by combining two items, either two life-change events or a social situation and an emotional state. In the initial three experiments, 159 male and 43 female alcoholics and 157 male and 93 female nonalcoholics in France judged the degree to which these scenarios were stressful and subsequently the degree to which they stimulated an urge to drink. In the final experiment, 126 of the male alcoholics were studied at the beginning and end of an inpatient alcohol rehabilitation program. RESULTS: The alcoholics and nonalcoholics, regardless of gender, assigned similar stress values to the scenarios and used the same cognitive rules for combining the stress associated with two items (disjunctive rules for two life-change events and additive ones for a personal emotion combined with a social situation). They differed, however, in how they judged the urge to drink. The nonalcoholics reported little stimulus to drink from any combination of items, whereas the alcoholics not only perceived the individual items as stimulating an urge to drink but also used the same cognitive rule in judging the combined urge to drink of two items as they used in judging the combined stress. After completing rehabilitation, the alcoholics judged the combinations of life-change events as stimulating less stress and less urge to drink. Nevertheless, they continued to use a disjunctive combination rule. CONCLUSIONS: Stress and drinking are linked at a fundamental cognitive level among alcoholics, though not among nonalcoholics. Alcoholics should be helped to recognize this link, to reduce their feelings of stress, and to find outlets other than drink.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

A study of the psychometric properties of the Fagestrom Test for Nicotine Dependence.

A factor analysis of 772 Fagestrom Test for Nicotine Dependence (FTND) was performed in a population of French workers with STATISTICA software, utilizing tetrachoric correlations to account for the dichotomous responses of the FTND. Confirmatory factorial analysis found the two-factor solution recently proposed for the FTND to be unsatisfactory. An exploratory factorial analysis concluded that the best solution was monofactorial when Item 3 was deleted. A confirmatory factorial analysis of the FTND provided support for this monofactorial solution. With the deletion of Item 3, the FTND achieved a high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha=.86). Thus, a revision of the FTND with the exclusion of Item 3 is proposed. This revised form of the FTND appears to assess a unidimensional construct indicating robust construct validity.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2003

Religious involvement and the forgiving personality.

The relationship between religious involvement and forgiveness was assessed in three samples of Western Europeans living in a social environment dominated by the Catholic tradition. The samples comprised nonbelievers/nonattendees, believers/nonattendees, believers/regular attendees, and religious people. Age and religious involvement were shown to affect the willingness to forgive in an interactive way: The effect of religious involvement was stronger for the elderly group. We also found that what made the difference in the willingness to forgive was mainly the social commitment to religion (attendance in church and the taking of vows), not mere personal beliefs. In addition, age and religious involvement were found to affect blockage towards forgiveness in an additive way.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2003

Risk target: an interactive context factor in risk perception.

The effect of specification of the target on risk evaluation was examined. A whole set of hazards, covering most of the domains, were considered: common individual hazards, outdoor activities, medical care, public transportation, energy production, pollutants, sex, deviance, and addictions. Three human targets were introduced: personal health risk (including personal risk of death), health risk for people in the country, and health risk for people in the world. The basic design was a between-subjects design. The first hypothesis was that risk judgments made in the "world" condition should be higher than risk judgments made in the "country" condition, and risk judgments made in this condition should be higher than risk judgments made in the "personal" condition. This is what was observed. The second hypothesis was that the target effect should differ as a function of the kind of hazards considered. This also is what was observed. In two domains--pollutants, and deviance, sex, and addictions--the target effect was important. It corresponded to about one-tenth of the response scale. In the four remaining domains, the target effect was unimportant or absent.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2003

Cognitive algebra of love through the adult life.

The study was aimed at characterizing the exact algebraic structure of the love schema in order to trace possible changes in the conceptualization of love throughout the adult life cycle, notably as regards the weight attributed to the three components of love: passion, intimacy, and commitment. The methodological framework was the Functional Theory of Cognition. Irrespective of the gender and age of the participants (from 18 to 93), the structure of the love schema was shown to obey an equal-weight-averaging rule; the love schema was conceived as a strictly compensatory schema. Irrespective of age and gender, passion was the most important factor (w = .51), followed by intimacy (.29) and commitment (.20). The relationship between overall love value and degree of passion (or intimacy or commitment) was not conceived as a linear one, but as an exponential one. The weight of passion was shown to decline over age, and the weight of commitment was shown to increase over age. This change was, however, very limited and observed in elderly participants only.

Adolescent↗