Exam 1 Study Guide Chapter 1 Describe changing patterns of illness Chronic illnesses have become the leading cause of death now instead of acute illnesses like 100 years ago Focus should be on preventative and supportive care instead of curing the illness Describe differences in mortality and life expectancy Life expectancy the expected number of years of life that remain for a person of a given age People under the age of 44 are more likely to die of unintentional injuries or violent deaths while people over the age of 45 are more likely to die of cardiovascular disease and cancer EAs have longer life expectancy than AAs and HAs probably because of SES Be able to discuss different ways health is conceptualized Biomedical model explanation of disease focuses on biological changes germ theory focusing on treatment of disease rather than person It reduces illness to a low level process and fails to recognize social and psychological processes and emphasizes illness over health and this model cannot address many puzzles that face practitioners Biopsychosocial model Health and illness are consequences of the interplay of biological genetics viruses bacteria lesions psychological behavior beliefs coping stress pain and social norms class employment ethnicity factors It emphasizes illness and health and includes both micro level and macro level processes Define and describe health psychology o Health psychology a new field of psychology devoted to understanding psychological influences on how people stay healthy why people get ill how people respond when they do get ill a field that contributes to both behavioral medicine and behavioral health the scientific study of behaviors that relate to health enhancement disease prevention and rehabilitation Know how health psychologists are trained and what jobs they hold o Health psychologists usually have a Ph D in health psych social psych or clinical psych although they can have a Psy D and need additional post doc training or internships They work mostly in private practice with some in academia health care settings or business government Chapter 2 Know the role of the placebo in research Placebo inactive substance or condition that has the appearance of an active treatment and that may cause participants to improve or change that controls for expectations Describe correlational cross sectional longitudinal studies Correlational studies studies designed to yield information concerning the degree of relationship between two variables Cross sectional studies a type of research design in which subjects of different ages are studied at one point in time Longitudinal studies a type of research design in which one group of subjects is studied over a period of time o o o o o o o o o o o o Describe experimental ex post facto designs o o o o o o o o Experimental design includes an independent variable a dependent variable and random assignment so that do changes in one variable cause changes in another variable while the other variable are held constant Ex post facto design a scientific study in which the values of the independent variable are not manipulated but selected by the experimenter after the groups have naturally divided themselves Chinese buffet example o Meta analysis a statistical technique for combing results of several studies when these studies Know what a meta analysis is have similar definition of variables Know research methods from epidemiology Epidemiology branch of medicine that investigates factors that contribute to health or disease in a particular population Prevalence proportion of population that has a particular disease or condition at a specific time Incidence the number of new cases of disease or condition during a specific time period Randomized controlled trials are an experimental method used to study the effects of drug or treatment where human subjects are used from a broad population to determine the clinical efficacy and pharmacologic effects of the drug or procedure Transparency is key in these trials to see how all treatments not just effective ones work Be able to explain the risk factor approach Risk factor any characteristic or condition that occurs with greater frequency in people with a disease than it does in people free from that disease o Absolute risk the person s chances of developing a disease or disorder independent of any risk that other people may have for that disease or disorder Relative risk the ratio of the incidence or prevalence of a disease in an exposed group to the incidence or prevalence of that disease in the unexposed group Know how causation is determined in the absence of experiments o Dose response relationship must exist between possible cause and disease with a consistent correlation Removal of the condition reduces the prevalence or incidence of the disease The cause must precede the disease A cause and effect relationship between the condition and the disease must be plausible Research findings must be consistent The strength of the association between the condition and the disease must be relatively high The studies were appropriately designed Know other methodological tools in health psych o o o o o o o Tools of neuroscience like fMRI MRI CAT scans CSF analysis mobile and wireless technology etc Describe epidemiological research methods observational methods and natural experiments o Observational studies are correlational studies They include retrospective studies which are longitudinal studies that look back at the history of a population or sample and prospective studies that are longitudinal studies that begin with a disease free group of subjects and follow the occurrence of disease in that population or sample o Natural experiments are ex post facto designs Know the role of theory in health psychology research Theory a set of related assumptions from which testable hypotheses can be drawn o o Useful theories generate research predict and explain research data and help the practitioner solve a variety of problems Reliability the extent to which it yields consistent results Test retest reliability comparing scores on two or more administrations of the same instrument Inter rater reliability comparing ratings obtained from two or more judges observing the same phenomenon Validity the extent to which an instrument measures what it is designed to measure Chapter 3 Be able to differentiate between illness behavior sick role behavior Illness behavior those activities