Torbjørn Rundmo

Perceived risk, health and consumer behaviour

The main aim of the present paper is to analyse how health attitudes, environmental concern and behaviour are influenced by risk perception. A self-completion questionnaire survey was carried out among Norwegian residents in 1996 and 1997. Respondents belonging to five subsamples participated in the study and a total of 1124 replied to the questionnaire. Perceived risk was measured by asking the respondents to assess how safe they felt from a health injury caused by specific sources of environmental and health risks. The questionnaire also contained indices of health attitudes, environmental concern, and behaviour, including health behaviour, environmental behaviour as well as consumer behaviour related to, i.e. purchasing green products. The respondents felt most unsafe regarding chemical food additives, infected food, industrial pollution and risks related to traffic behaviour. Attitudes towards health promotion were strongly associated with health behaviour and environmental concern significantly affected environmental behaviour. There was also a strong correlation between the different types of behaviour. Attitudes and environmental concern explained 40% of the variance in environmental as well as consumer behaviour. Risk perception was found to be a rather weak predictor variable for behaviour.

Treatment and recovery as perceived by patients with substance addiction.

Social relations to therapists and other patients in treatment are important for positive and negative experiences among patients with substance addiction. * Improvements in mental health and substance use were considered as the more important areas of recovery among these patients. * One of the core reasons for premature dropout could be a failure to establish positive social relations and temptations to relapse to substance use. Abstract Research concerning patients with substance addiction and how they perceive their treatment remains scant. The objective of this study was therefore to examine positive and negative perceptions of treatment and recovery from the perspectives of these patients. Data were collected with semi-structured interviews among seven patients who completed treatment and six patients who prematurely dropped out from their programme (n= 13). Patients were strategically sampled from five inpatient facilities and one outpatient opioid maintenance treatment clinic located in two Norwegian counties. All interviews were transcribed and thereafter analysed with contextual content analysis aided by the qsr nvivo 8.0 software. This was carried out to obtain information about the manifest positive and negative content in the interviews. The results showed that the therapeutic alliance and mutual influences among patients were important for perceptions of treatment. Frequent staff turnover also related to these perceptions. The more important domains of recovery were psychosocial functioning and substance use. The implications of the results were discussed in relation to clinical practice and further research.

Associations between ward atmosphere, patient satisfaction and outcome

Previous studies have found important associations between the ward atmosphere and patient satisfaction. However, fewer studies have examined the relationship between ward atmosphere and outcome of treatment. The aim of the study was to examine whether or not differences in ward atmosphere were associated with differences in satisfaction and outcome. Eighty patients at three different ward units responded to a questionnaire at admission and by the time of discharge from the hospital. The questionnaire comprised the ward atmosphere scale, a five-item index of patient satisfaction, the Generalized Self-Efficacy Scale, an index of life satisfaction and the symptom checklist SCL-90R. The results showed that differences in the treatment environment between the ward units were associated with differences in patient satisfaction. There was mixed evidence for associations between ward atmosphere and outcome, while no associations were found between ward atmosphere and self-efficacy and life satisfaction. The results may suggest that the relationship between ward atmosphere and outcomes of treatment may be of a more indirect character than the relationship between ward atmosphere and satisfaction.

Interrelations Between Patients’ Personal Life Events, Psychosocial Distress, and Substance Use

This study investigated interrelations between life events, psychosocial distress, self-efficacy, and substance use among patients manifesting substance use disorders. Gender differences in these interrelations were also explored. Patients (N = 352) were recruited during 2008 and 2009 from 16 Norwegian facilities. These patients completed a questionnaire with validated measurement instruments. Interrelations were investigated by SEM analysis. The results suggested that negative life events facilitated substance use and psychological distress. Positive life events were associated with self-efficacy, but weakly related to substance use. The results supported the notion that males are more prone to use substances when faced upon negative life events.

Risk Perception and Worry Related to Adolescents' Judgement of Three Types of Risk

The core aim of this study was to examine determinants of anticipated worry related to three types of risk among adolescents. The participants were Norwegian high‐school students aged 15–19 years (n = 335). They were students at 6 high schools and a total of 15 randomly selected school classes participated in the study. All the students were asked to fill in a self‐completion questionnaire. The response rate was 100 per cent. The participants were shown three video sequences of three‐minute conversations between a person and a listener discussing three risk sources, which each had developed into a problem (drug use, depression, and sexual abuse). The video sequences were shown to the students when they were in their classes. The results showed that there were gender differences in probability assessments as well as in anticipated worry related to the three types of risk. There were also differences in worry depending on the respondents past experience with an identical or similar problem or risk. In addition to cognitive evaluations, own experience and gender, general worry, social support seeking, anxiety and depression significantly predicted worry. These variables explained 52 per cent of the variance. Worry may be a significant predictor of risk behaviour as well as decisions concerning risks and risk reduction. The results are related to the risk‐as‐feelings hypothesis (Loewenstein, Weber, Hsee and Welch) and other risk decision models are also discussed.