V. Jane Knox

The Age Group Evaluation and Description (AGED) Inventory: A New Instrument for Assessing Stereotypes of and Attitudes toward Age Groups

The AGED Inventory was designed to overcome shortcomings identified in the Aging Semantic Differential, a frequently used measure of how age groups are perceived. The new instrument was developed to allow assessment both of age stereotypes and of attitudes toward age-specified targets. The Inventory was developed with data from 300 male and 300 female respondents. Two seven-item evaluative factors (the Goodness and Positiveness dimensions) resulted from a series of factor analyses used to reduce an initial set of thirty-five evaluative adjective pairs. Two seven-item descriptive factors (the Vitality and Maturity dimensions) resulted from a separate series of factor analyses used to reduce an initial set of fifty adjective pairs judged to differentiate age groups. Using confirmatory factor analyses and coefficients of congruence on data from an additional 800 respondents, the factor structures of the two evaluative factors and of the two descriptive factors were found to be replicable for young, middle-aged, and old targets assessed in either between or within subject designs. Its ease of administration, multi-dimensionality, flexibility of targets specification, and capability for assessing attitude and/or stereotype in a manner congruent with current conceptualizations of these constructs make the AGED Inventory useful in a variety of contexts.

Analgesia for experimentally induced pain: Multiple sessions of acupuncture compared to hypnosis in high- and low-susceptible subjects.

Repeated trials with cold-pressor pain were used to (a) determine whether the modest relation between hypnotic susceptibility and response to acupuncture analgesia obtained in previous experiments is enhanced over a series of treatments; (b) compare acupuncture and hypnotic analgesias; and (c) assess whether acupuncture analgesia increases with repeated treatments. Twenty high and 20 low hypnotically susceptible subjects participated on 5 different days. For half of each susceptibility group, Sessions 1-3 consisted of a baseline trial followed by an acupuncture analgesia trial. The remaining subjects had two no-treatment trials on each of these sessions. For all subjects Session 4 was a baseline followed by a hypnotic analgesia trial, and Session 5 was a repetition of the procedures followed in Sessions 1-3. Repeated exposures to acupuncture did not alter its analgesic effect in either susceptibility group; there were no instances of significant postacupuncture pain reduction. High susceptibles, but not low susceptibles, reported marked pain reduction after hypnotic analgesia. From these and previous findings it is concluded that the effect of acupuncture on experimentally induced pain is at best small and fragile.

Response to cold pressor pain and to acupuncture analgesia in Oriental and Occidental subjects.

&NA; On a no treatment trial, a group of 24 oriental subjects rated cold pressor pain as significantly more painful and distressing than did a group of 24 occidental subjects. For half of the Orientals and half of the Occidentals, a second trial was conducted after acupuncture analgesia had been induced. The remaining 12 Orientals and 12 Occidentals served as no treatment controls on trial 2. Regardless of racial group, there was no difference between the pain of those experimental subjects who received acupuncture and the pain of those controls who did not. As they had on trial 1, Orientals reported significantly more pain and distress in response to ice water on trial 2. It is concluded that:: (1) if acupuncture does work better for the Chinese than for other racial groups, the likely cause is a more refined patient selection procedure rather than an ‐inherent difference in response to acupuncture;, (2) evidence does not support the stereotyped view of Orientals as stoical in the face of physical pain.

Women's Views of Institutional Versus Community-Based Long-Term Care

Young, middle-age, and old women (N = 434) read factual descriptions of institutional and community-based care, and then made long-term care choices for elderly female targets with varying degrees of functional impairment, cognitive impairment, and informal support. Respondents also indicated what they would prefer in the targets situation. Results indicated that (1) community care was more positively perceived than institutional care, (2) only one-third had negative feelings about institutional care, (3) the greater the level of impairment the more likely institutional care was the preferred alternative, and (4) the less informal support a woman had the more likely that institutional care was the preferred care alternative. It was concluded that womens views of institutional care are not strongly negative, and that the availability of informal support is an even stronger predictor of long-term care choice for others or for the imagined self than is level of impairment. The implications of these findings for public policy are discussed.

Hypnotic Analgesia vs. Acupuncture Analgesia in High and Low Hypnotically Susceptible Subjects

The present study was designed to compare the effect of hypnotic analgesia with that of acupuncture analgesia. The cold pressor pain of 12 high and 12 low hypnotically susceptible subjects was assessed under three conditions: 1) no treatment baseline; 2) hypnotic analgesia; and, 3) acupuncture analgesia. Pain intensity, as measured by Hilgard’s verbal report scale (Hilgard, Cooper, Lenox, Morgan, & Voevodsky, 1967) did not differ between the groups on the no treatment baseline trial. For all subjects, hypnotic analgesia was the more effective treatment. As expected, hypnotic analgesia was significantly more effective for highs than it was for lows. Acupuncture analgesia was also more effective for highs than it was for lows, but the difference between the groups only approached statistical significance. The data suggested that for high susceptibles acupuncture analgesia may be more effective when it is preceded by an experience with hypnotic analgesia.