Judgement of risk in traumatized and nontraumatized emergency medical service personnel

Date
2004
Authors
Nortje C.
Roberts C.B.
Moller A.T.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
This study investigated the hypothesis that posttraumatic stress is associated with a judgement of risk bias, defined as an overestimation of the likelihood of the occurrence of adverse events, as proposed by information-processing theories of posttraumatic stress disorder. Emergency medical service personnel with high PTSD symptomatology (n = 27) and without PTSD symptoms (n = 74) completed the PTSD Symptom Scale: Self-report version, the Work Experiences Questionnaire, the Beck Depression Inventory, and an Event Probability Questionnaire. Analysis showed that individuals with high PTSD symptomatology exhibited significantly more judgement of risk bias, that this cognitive bias was towards a wider range of threats than those involving only the threat of external harm, and that intrusion was its best predictor. © Psychological Reports 2004.
Description
Keywords
adult, article, decision making, epidemiology, female, human, life event, male, middle aged, occupational disease, personality test, posttraumatic stress disorder, probability, psychological aspect, psychometry, reproducibility, rescue personnel, risk assessment, risk factor, South Africa, statistical model, statistics, Adult, Bias (Epidemiology), Emergency Medical Technicians, Female, Humans, Judgment, Life Change Events, Likelihood Functions, Male, Middle Aged, Occupational Diseases, Personality Inventory, Probability, Psychometrics, Reproducibility of Results, Risk Assessment, Risk Factors, South Africa, Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic
Citation
Psychological Reports
95
3 II