Graeme Ford

Reaction times and intelligence differences: A population-based cohort study

The association between reaction times and psychometric intelligence test scores is a major plank of the information-processing approach to mental ability differences. An important but unavailable datum is the effect size of the correlation in the normal population. Here we describe the associations between scores on a test of general mental ability (Alice Heim 4, AH4) and reaction times using a ‘Hick’-style device. The sample is 900 people aged 56 years who are broadly representative of the Scottish population. AH4 Part I total scores correlated −.31 with simple reaction time, −.49 with four-choice reaction time, and −.26 with intraindividual variability in both reaction time procedures. The correlation between AH4 scores and the difference between simple and four-choice reaction time was −.15. Separate analyses were conducted after partitioning the total group according to sex, educational level, social class grouping, and number of errors on the four-choice reaction time task. None of these factors significantly altered the effect sizes. This is the first report of reaction time and psychometric intelligence in a large, normal sample of the population. It provides a benchmark for other studies and suggests larger effect sizes than the majority of present studies, which are dominated by young student samples.

Do housing tenure and car access predict health because they are simply markers of income or self esteem? A Scottish study.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate relations between health (using a range of measures) and housing tenure or car access; and to test the hypothesis that observed relations between these asset based measures and health are simply because they are markers for income or self esteem. DESIGN: Analysis of data from second wave of data collection of West of Scotland Twenty-07 study, collected in 1991 by face to face interviews conducted by nurse interviewers. SETTING: The Central Clydeside Conurbation, in the West of Scotland. SUBJECTS: 785 people (354 men, 431 women) in their late 30s, and 718 people (358 men, 359 women) in their late 50s, participants in a longitudinal study. MEASURES: General Health Questionnaire scores, respiratory function, waist/hip ratio, number of longstanding illnesses, number of symptoms in the last month, and systolic blood pressure; household income adjusted for household size and composition; Rosenberg self esteem score; housing tenure and care access. RESULTS: On bivariate analysis, all the health measures were significantly associated with housing tenure, and all except waist/hip ratio with car access; all except waist/hip ratio were related to income, and all except systolic blood pressure were related to self esteem. In models controlling for age, sex, and their interaction, neither waist/hip ratio nor systolic blood pressure remained significantly associated with tenure or care access. Significant relations with all the remaining health measures persisted after further controlling for income or self esteem. CONCLUSIONS: Housing tenure and car access may not only be related to health because they are markers for income or psychological traits; they may also have some directly health promoting or damaging effects. More research is needed to establish mechanisms by which they may influence health, and to determine the policy implications of their association with health.

Blood pressure reactions to stress and the prediction of future blood pressure: effects of sex, age, and socioeconomic position.

Objective This epidemiological study examined whether the magnitude of blood pressure reactions to mental stress was associated with future blood pressure and whether the strength of association was affected by sex, age, and socioeconomic position. Materials and Methods Resting blood pressure was recorded at initial baseline and in response to mental stress. Five-year follow-up resting blood pressure data were available for 990 (68%) of the participants; 333 were 23 years old at the time of stress testing, 427 were 43, and 230 were 63. There were 541 women and 449 men; 440 came from manual and 550 from nonmanual occupation households. Results Systolic blood pressure reactions to stress correlated positively with follow-up systolic blood pressure; no association was found for diastolic blood pressure reactions and follow-up diastolic blood pressure. In multivariate tests, systolic reactivity remained predictive of follow-up systolic blood pressure and accounted for 2.3% of the variance not explained by age, body mass index, and initial baseline systolic blood pressure. Systolic and diastolic reactivity predicted 5-year upward drift in systolic and diastolic blood pressure respectively, accounting for an additional 3.6% and 2.9% of variance, respectively, in multivariate models. The predictive value of reactivity was greater for participants from manual occupation households and tended to be greater for men. Conclusions The results of this study indicate that blood reactions to mental stress predict future blood pressure status and the increase in resting blood pressure over time. The magnitude of the prediction appears to vary with socioeconomic position and sex.

Patterns of class inequality in health through the lifespan: class gradients at 15, 35 and 55 years in the west of Scotland.

Data confirming the existence of social inequalities in health have continued to accumulate since the Black Report reported class inequalities across a broad range of causes of mortality, with an increasing emphasis on indicators of morbidity and current health status. Although evidence of continuing inequalities mounts, elucidation of underlying mechanisms generating and maintaining such inequalities has been more elusive, and much of the debate has oscillated from the very broad to the very specific. In this paper, the class patterning of a range of non-fatal indicators of health are modelled in an attempt to outline first the adequacy of models of linear relationships for this range of measures, and secondly, the extent to which these are generalizable across a series of age/sex subgroups and across different domains of health. Data are presented here for representative community samples of men and women in adolescence, early- and late-midlife. While orderly relationships between social class and health were seen for the majority of the measures considered; the detailed patterns show considerable diversity. Thus for some aspects of health, notably height (itself often heralded as a broad indicator of health and early life experience), common class gradients were observed for both sexes at each of the stages of the life course examined. For others (notably mental health and presence of chronic illness), gradients were evident in later life but not in adolescence. Others still showed sex but not age differences in class patterning (typically measures of body shape), or no clear patterns (notably blood pressure and consultations with general practitioners). The current analysis draws attention to the consistency of gradients in early- and late-midlife, which are apparent despite the marked increase in the burden of poorer health which manifests between these life stages for almost all indicators of health (an exception being mental health). The challenges which this presents for understanding the mechanisms and processes which have been candidate explanations for social inequalities in health are discussed.

Are women more ready to consult than men? Gender differences in family practitioner consultation for common chronic conditions.

Background: When consultations for all reasons are combined, women are seen to consult their general practitioners more than men through most of adult life. It is, therefore, often assumed that women are more likely to consult for every condition. Objectives: To examine whether women report being more likely to consult a general practitioner than men when taking account of the underlying condition and various aspects of the experience of the condition consulted for. Methods: Home-based nurse-interviews with 852 people in early middle age (39 years) and 858 in late middle age (58 years) sampled from the general population in the West of Scotland. Detailed information about current chronic conditions included general practitioner consultation and reported experience of pain frequency, pain severity, limitation to normal activities and restricted activity in the previous four weeks. Results: Women were no more likely than men to consult a general practitioner in the previous year when experiencing the five most common groups of conditions; in addition, women were no more likely than men to consult at a given level of severity for a given condition type, except in the case of one aspect of reported experience of mental health problems. Conclusions: The results argue against the most widely accepted explanation for gender differences in consulting, namely, that women are simply more likely to consult a general practitioner than men irrespective of underlying morbidity. Reasons for the higher rates of women consulting observed in general practice-based studies are discussed in relation to these data.

Question wording effects in the assessment of global self-esteem

Summary:Marsh (1996) produced evidence that method effects associated with negatively worded items might be responsible for the results of earlier factor analytic studies that reported finding positive and negative self-esteem factors in the Rosenberg Global self-esteem scale (Rosenberg, 1965). He analyzed data collected from children using a 7-item self-esteem measure. This report details attempts to replicate Marshs analysis in data collected from two samples of adults who completed the full 10-item Global Self-Esteem (GSE) scale. The results reported here are similar to those given by Marsh in so much as a correlated uniquenesses model produced a superior fit to the data than the simple one factor model (without correlated uniquenesses) or the often reported two factor (positive and negative self-esteem) model. However, whilst Marsh reported that the best fit was produced by allowing negative item uniquenesses to correlate with each other, the model that produced the best fit to these data was one tha...

The effects of caring on health: A community-based longitudinal study

This paper begins with a critical review of studies which have examined the effects of caring on health. Most are shown to suffer from defects in sampling and design, so that the evidence for detrimental effects is suggestive rather than conclusive. The substantive part of the paper then utilizes data on a cohort of 55-year-olds to compare the health of carers with the health of non-carers and to examine changes in caring and health over a 3-year period. The comparison yields no systematic evidence of the deleterious effects of caring on health; indeed, if there is a tendency in the accumulated data, it is in the opposite direction i.e. that carers report better health and functioning than non-carers. It is suggested that part of the explanation relates to selection and self-selection and the longitudinal data reveals high volatility in caring status, even over a short time period. The paper goes on to examine sub-groups of carers considered to be at greater risk. There is no evidence that their health is compromised but the authors acknowledge weaknesses in the data and argue for a specially designed study. The paper concludes with a discussion of the findings and their implications for research, policy and practice.

Cardiovascular reactions to psychological stress: the influence of demographic variables

Large magnitude cardiovascular reactions to psychological stress have been implicated in the development and expression of cardiovascular disease.1 Given that cardiovascular disease varies as a function of demographic variables such as age, sex, and socioeconomic status (SES), it is surprising that there are few substantive data on the effects of such variables on the magnitude of cardiovascular reactions to stress. Although counter examples exist, small scale studies have reported greater heart rate reactions to stress in women, irrespective of stage of the menstrual cycle.2 Age has also been found to influence cardiovascular reactivity, with younger cohorts showing larger heart rate but lower systolic blood pressure reactions to stress.3 Finally, the one published study that has examined SES variations in reactivity found larger systolic blood pressure reactions to stress in higher occupational groups.4 Thus, the available data suggest that cardiovascular reactions to psychological stress are patterned by age, sex, and SES in a manner that is not wholly commensurate …

WHY IS THE RECEIPT OF SOCIAL SUPPORT ASSOCIATED WITH INCREASED PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTRESS? AN EXAMINATION OF THREE HYPOTHESES

Abstract Although there is a great deal of research linking social support with favourable psychological well-being outcomes a number of contradictory findings have been published showing support to be associated with increased psychological distress. These contrary findings arise when social support is measured as the receipt of supportive behavior rather than perceptions of support availability and quality. This paper examines three hypotheses that have been advanced to explain why the receipt of support is associated with distress. The first of these hypotheses (the support mobilisation hypothesis) argues that the relationship is a spurious one, and that it is a product of distressing circumstances which increase both support receipt and psychological distress. The other two hypotheses (the inequity hypothesis and the esteem threat hypothesis) both argue that receiving support actually causes distress. We tested these hypotheses in two samples. One sample was a group of individuals who reported having ...

Morbidity and Irish Catholic descent in Britain: Relating health disadvantage to socio-economic position

In common with some other ethnic and religious minorities whose forebears migrated from their country of origin, Irish Catholics in Britain are less well off than the host population in terms of socio-economic position and health. Results are presented from a Scottish study, where Catholic religion of origin mainly indicates Irish ancestry, and it is estimated that about one-third of the population is of significant Irish descent. In this study, excess of physical and mental health problems and disability have previously been reported for those of Catholic background, particularly in the eldest cohort (aged 56 in 1988), and have not been fully explained by health-related behaviour. In this paper, we examine a number of key health measures, namely self-assessed health, number of symptoms in the month prior to interview, sadness or depression, disability and lung function, and various indicators of socio-economic position (head of household social class, main source of income, car ownership, housing tenure and school-leaving age), which all show Catholic disadvantage. Using longitudinal results from the 723 respondents who completed interviews both at sweeps one (1988) and three (1995), it is estimated that about half of the morbidity excess amongst middle-aged Catholics in Glasgow can be explained by socio-economic disadvantage. The health and socio-economic position of white minorities and disadvantaged religious minorities like Catholics in Scotland should be monitored by a co-ordinated information strategy.