Carmen Moran

Emergency work experience and reactions to traumatic incidents

The present study examined the association between volunteer emergency work experience, personality, and reactions to a past traumatic incident. Participants from randomly selected State Emergency Services and Volunteer Bushfire Brigade Units in New South Wales (Australia) completed four questionnaires. The data did not support the idea that emergency workers are hardier than most, or have particular coping styles. Length of volunteer emergency service was associated with both severity and length of reaction to a past traumatic incident. The number of emergency callouts and current general symptom severity were associated with severity of reaction to a past incident.

Coping with Stress: Social Work Students and Humour

In social work, humour is being increasingly accepted as a strategy for coping with stress. The literature does not indicate whether humour is acquired on the job or is a characteristic of people entering the social work profession. This study examined sense of humour in 32 undergraduate social work students and its relationship with self‐ratings of stress and stress‐related physical symptoms. In contrast with other research findings, the measure ‘liking humour’ correlated positively with stress and symptoms, indicating that liking humour was associated with poorer well‐being. On the other hand, the tendency to use humour socially correlated with low levels of stress. Using humour socially may help people obtain social support, which is responsible for reducing the effects of stress. That is, the support engendered by humour may be more important in reducing stress than humour itself. Seeing supervisors use humour gives students permission to laugh and focus away from the serious side for a while. While accepting the complexity of humour and caution necessary in some circumstances, we recommend that the topic of humour is formally included in the social work curriculum. Teaching about humour may bring humour itself into the classroom, which in turn enhances other aspects of learning.

Differential influences of coping humor and humor bias on mood

The authors investigated relationships among sense of humor measured by a questionnaire, attentional bias toward humor measured by performance on a word-search task, and experimentally induced mood change through the use of sad and humorous cartoons. Mood was significantly altered in a negative direction after the sad cartoon. Coping humor, part of the sense of humor questionnaire, was associated with less negative mood ratings after the sad cartoon. In terms of main effects, only a modest change in mood was found after the humorous cartoon. Humor bias was associated with more positive mood ratings after the humorous cartoon. The authors suggest that coping humor serves a protective psychological function, helping screen the person from negative stimuli and, thus, from negative reactions. Attentional bias toward humor serves a different protective psychological function by helping the person focus on mood-enhancing stimuli in the environment.

Positive reactions following emergency and disaster responses

Firefighters completed a questionnaire which examined both positive and negative reactions following major call‐outs. Positive reactions were more frequently checked than negative ones. Factor analysis of positive reactions resulted in four factors, suggesting that positive reactions after a call‐out represented more than an increased sense of general wellbeing. The type of reactions reported were related to the type of incident attended. Differences in reaction patterns were related to self‐reported coping style and age of the firefighters.

Consumer demand for low-alcohol wine in an Australian sample

Background: The aim of this paper is to inform wine producers and marketers of those in the population who are interested in low-alcohol wine by describing the results of an Australian survey. Method: In the present study, 851 adult wine consumers completed an online questionnaire on their purchasing and consumption of wine, demographics, knowledge, and reasons for consuming wine. Reasons for consumption were defined using Brunner and Siegrist’s validated model. Self-reported interest in low-alcohol wine was used to determine the likely maximum possible market size. Results: The majority of respondents considered “low-alcohol wine” to contain around 3%–8% alcohol. Results indicated that those most likely to purchase low-alcohol wine were female and those who drink wine with food. Those who drank wine more frequently showed interest in wine sold in known-dose quantities, such as one standard drink. Reasons for preferring a low-alcohol wine included driving after drinking, to lessen the adverse effects of alcohol, and to consume more without the effects of a higher-alcohol wine. Finally, results pointed to the importance of taste as a driver of consumption. Conclusion: This is the first study to define the opportunity market for low-alcohol wine in Australia agnostic to intervening variables, thus defines the likely upper limit. Further, we showed what consumers currently define as low alcohol. Both of these findings allow wine companies to make a decision on the profitability of the low-alcohol market in Australia.

Perceptions of work stress in Australian firefighters

Abstract This study surveyed 747 firefighters on their perceptions of work stress. The current emphasis in the fire brigades is on the management of traumatic or critical incident stress, but other work stressors may also be important. The firefighters rated their jobs as more stressful than other occupations, and psychological work stress as highest among a set of potential sources and types of stress. Although many factors were mentioned, the most frequently indicated stressors were associated with exposure to traumatic incidents such as major accidents or the suffering of others. Those who had previous experience with stress were more likely to rate current and future risk of stress as higher. Knowledge of existing organizational approaches to stress management was limited. The firefighters rated individual and informal sessions for dealing with stress as potentially more useful than the formal debriefing sessions now common in many emergency organizatins. Those who had previous experience with stress,...

Personal predictions of stress and stress reactions in firefighter recruits

Researchers and counsellors have observed a range of stress reactions in emergency service workers even after extreme and putatively traumatic incidents. Various studies have sought to delineate characteristics of incidents or of individuals which account for differences in appraisal and stress reactions. Few studies have examined expectations of stress and stressors in recruits to emergency work. Looks at such expectations in firefighter recruits, measured at the beginning and end of their training program, and compares their predictions with actual ratings from a group of experienced firefighters in the same organization. Most of the recruits already had some familiarity with the emergency environment. Stress ratings for items dealing with other people in the emergency work context increased over training. Discusses the relationships between predictions of stress, training, and task performance.

Stress and emergency work experience: a non‐linear relationship

Emergency workers vary in their levels of experience, both in terms of years of service and involvement with traumatic incidents, and both types can influence vulnerability to stress. Opposing arguments can be made that experience has a sensitising or desensitising effect. Experienced emergency workers are shown to be more at risk in some studies and less so in others. It is proposed that the relationship between experience and stress is not necessarily linear, as is frequently assumed in such studies. This paper presents a test of linear and quadratic trends on stress and related variables across three groups of experienced firefighters. The results support the proposition that the relationship between stress and experience is quadratic, with stress highest in the middle experience group, and lowest in the low and high experience groups. This result is not explained by differences in actual traumatic exposures or coping practices. Other possible reasons are discussed.

Reasons for drinking wine and other beverages – comparison across motives in older adults

Objectives: Health as a positive reason for drinking wine (eg, antioxidant content) has scant empirical data to inform policy. This study attempted to examine that motive by including health as one of six motives for drinking, along with measures of problem drinking (the Cut-down, Annoyed, Guilty, Eye-opener [CAGE] questionnaire) in an older adult population. Design: Four drinking motives (enhancement, coping, social, and conformity), plus taste and health were included within a larger national telephone survey on drinking behaviors. We also recorded beverage preference. Results: In this analysis, 705 participants drank a preferred beverage. Taste was the most highly endorsed motive. Just under one quarter of the sample endorsed health as a positive reason for drinking. After controlling for age, sex, and preferred alcoholic beverage, the internal psychological motives of enhancement and coping predicted CAGE scores, but external motives did not. Believing that alcohol is healthy was a negative predictor of CAGE scores. Our results showed a different pattern to those with younger drinkers reported in previous research. Our older group was less likely to drink for social reasons and internal motives were predictive of CAGE scores. Conclusion: A motives-based approach to managing problem drinking will need to take account of a wider range of age-related motives. Based on the current data, there is little reason to suspect drinking wine for health reasons is associated with potential problem drinking.

Recruits’ predictions of positive reactions in diasaster and emergency work

Recruits entering a firefighting training program gave predictions about the likelihood of positive or negative reactions after a stressful emergency call‐out. Their results were compared with a group of experienced firefighters. Recruits more frequently checked positive than negative reactions, a pattern resembling that of the experienced firefighters. The recruits, however, were generally more optimistic than the experienced group, and this did not change significantly across training. Expectations of positive reactions are not necessarily good or bad. Excessive expectation about positive reactions may increase vulnerability when emergency workers cannot do anything to save lives or prevent destruction. Alternatively, an excessive reliance on positive reactions may form a type of addiction making the emergency worker vulnerable to subsequent breakdown in coping and performance. Recruits’ expectations can be addressed during training, especially those expectations that put emergency workers at risk in disaster and emergency environments.