Christine Bocéréan

A validation study of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) in a large sample of French employees.

BackgroundThe Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) is a questionnaire widely used for detecting anxiety and depressive disorders. It is used extensively in France, but has never been the subject of a full study in a population at work. The objectives of this study were to present some psychometric properties of the HADS on a large sample of French employees.MethodThe HADS questionnaire was given to salaried employees at 19 major French companies as part of their biennial occupational medical examination. In 2011, 20992 employees filled in the questionnaire. HADS’s structure was studied first by exploratory, then confirmatory factorial analyses.ResultsThe model selected was the original two-factor structure. The two subscales showed good internal consistency. Women scored higher than the men for anxiety and depression; the scores increased with age; engineers and managers had lower average scores than other occupational status (blue- or white-collar workers and technicians).ConclusionThe results of the analyses are consistent with those in literature relating to other populations studied in other countries. The HADS questionnaire is pertinent for detecting symptoms of anxiety and depression in a population of people at work.

Psychosocial risk assessment: French validation of the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ)

Aims: This study presents a French version of the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ) and analyses its psychometric properties for the purpose of validation. The questionnaire assesses psychosocial risk factors at work. The French questionnaire (derived from the Danish short version) is composed of 32 items grouped into 17 scales measuring five domains and eight additional questions assessing aggressive behaviour at work. Method: The questionnaire was administered to 935 employees of a large firm in the Parisian area. Results: All psychometric analyses performed (internal consistency of the scales, exploratory factor analysis, concurrent validity analysis) gave satisfactory results and demonstrated the validity of the French COPSOQ. Conclusions: A new questionnaire is now available in French. A large body of data is currently being gathered in view of comparing occupations and types of firms using this new instrument.

Profil neuropsychologique et capacités métapragmatiques dans le syndrome de Schachman-Diamond

L’objectif principal de cette etude pilote est d’avancer des hypotheses quant au profil neuropsychologique des enfants et adolescents francais porteurs du Syndrome de Shwachman-Diamond (SSD), maladie genetique rare. Il s’agit egalement d’evaluer les capacites metapragmatiques a partir d’epreuves dialoguees de comprehension de trois formes non litterales de demandes indirectes specifiquement amenagees pour cette population. L’originalite de ce travail reside ainsi dans l’analyse des profils comportementaux et dans l’etude des fonctions cognitives superieures de 7 enfants SSD. Au-dela du faible potentiel cognitif observe pour notre echantillon, plus de la moitie des enfants SSD presentent des difficultes de cognition sociale et tous manifestent des problemes comportementaux (notamment d’adaptation sociale) et executifs. Les resultats obtenus mettent en evidence des profils particuliers de performances au sein des differentes epreuves evaluant la cognition sociale. L’hypothese d’une atteinte specifique de certains aspects de la theorie de l’esprit est ainsi soulevee.

Verbal Interaction Structures and Repetition's Functions: A Comparison of Exchanges Between Adults and Severely Disabled Adolescents or Young Children

This article describes a study in which conversation analysis was used to examine verbal interactions between caregivers and severely disabled adolescents or young children. It focused on the phenomenon of repetition, which seems to be the basis of the mutual-understanding process. We compared dialogue structures containing repetitions in the two corpora. To analyze the pragmatic functions of repetitions, we used the categorization scheme developed previously. The results showed that the structure of the transactions was directly linked to the repetitions function, which was the organizing principle of the transactions in most cases. However, in the disabled adolescents corpus the function of multiple repetitions within the same transaction could not be interpreted using the traditional categorization scheme. We interpreted this new function as a more basic function that facilitates the emergence of mutual understanding during conversations between caregivers and severely disabled young people.

La mesure du stress en milieu professionnel avec l’échelle de stress perçu (Perceived Stress Scale): pertinence des versions en dix et quatre items

Resume Cet article presente les qualites psychometriques de l’echelle de stress percu (Cohen, Kamarck, & Mermelstein, 1983) en dix et en quatre items. Nos objectifs sont d’une part de verifier si nous retrouvons les principaux resultats de la litterature en ce qui concerne la version en dix items et d’observer d’autre part si les proprietes psychometriques de la version en quatre items sont suffisamment bonnes pour utiliser ce questionnaire. La population de l’etude consiste en 16853 salaries travaillant dans de grandes entreprises francaises. Les analyses presentees concernent la structure des questionnaires, la consistance interne de ces echelles, leur capacite a discriminer des groupes de personnes selon le genre, le groupe d’âge et le statut professionnel ainsi que la validite concourante des deux versions. Nos resultats montrent que 1) nous retrouvons les principales caracteristiques psychometriques de l’echelle de stress percu en dix items decrites dans la litterature et 2) la version en quatre items presente des qualites suffisamment bonnes pour etre utilisee dans une estimation du stress percu.

How do adults use repetition? A comparison of conversations with young children and with multiply-handicapped adolescents.

The aim of this research is to compare the types and functions of repetitions in two different corpora, one constituted of verbal interactions between adults and multiply-handicapped adolescents, the other between adults and young children of the same mental age as the adolescents. Our overall aim is to observe whether the communicative (linguistic and pragmatic) behaviour of adults varies according to the interlocutor and, if it does vary, in what ways. The main results show that adults do not use repetition strategy with the same aims according to the interlocutor. When interacting with a child, repetitions form part of a strategy of linguistic ‘tutoring’ which allow the child to take on board progressively more complex linguistic constructions; it also enriches exchanges from a pragmatic point of view. On the other hand, when adults communicate with multiply-handicapped adolescents, their main aim is the maintaining of dialogue.