The appearance of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in Europe, and particularly the outbreak reported last month in Turkey, has heightened already raised concerns about the spread of the virus and its potential to seed the next human pandemic. There are new worries about how the disease appeared to infect birds almost simultaneously in 13 provinces scattered around Turkey and further concerns about w...

BACKGROUND Children's independent mobility differs between groups of adolescents, but knowledge is lacking on how mobility-limiting factors interact. This study explores the association between factors that can affect young adolescents' mobility, searching for typical patterns within a geographical area where mobility is both relatively high and promoted (in this case Stockholm County, Sweden)....

AIM To examine fears about dying in an ethnically diverse population sample, and a more homogeneous population sample, aged 65 and over. METHODS Personal interviews with people aged 65+ living at home responding to two Office for National Statistics Omnibus Surveys in Britain, and two Ethnibus Surveys of ethnically diverse populations in Britain. RESULTS Ethnically diverse respondents were ...

Job Loss Fears and (Extremist) Party Identification: First Evidence from Panel Data There is a large body of literature analyzing the relationship between objective economic conditions and voting behavior, but there is very little evidence of how perceived economic insecurity impacts on political preferences. Using seventeen years of household panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we...

Two studies examined impostor fears, self-handicapping and self-presentational concerns. In Study 1 (113 women, 52 men), impostor fears were significantly related to social desirability (low self-deception over impression management), perfectionistic cognitions, and non-display of imperfection to others. In Study 2, 72 women were exposed either to face-saving failure (failure that was did not i...

This paper describes an evaluation of Taylor's (1998) hierarchic model of fears and its relationship to trait anxiety and disgust sensitivity (DS). In Study 1 (N=420), a confirmatory factor analysis supported a hierarchic structure of fears. Next, an analysis using structural equation modeling indicated that trait anxiety is associated with claustrophobic and social fears, whereas DS is associa...

Rachman's (Behaviour Research and Therapy 15:372-387, 1977; Clinical Psychology Review 11:155-173, 1991) three pathways theory proposed that childhood fears not only arise as a consequence of direct learning experiences, but can also be elicited by means of threat information transmission. This review looks at the scientific evidence for this idea, which has accumulated during the past three de...

The fears of 133 boys and girls aged 7 to 19, classified as educable mentally retarded (EMR), trainable mentally retarded (TMR), and specific learning disabled (SLD), were ascertained through self-report data and compared with those of 106 normal children aged 6 to 12. Similar developmental trends were found in all groups, with younger children reporting more unrealistic fears than older childr...

Needle fears are a documented barrier to immunization in children and adults. There is a paucity of data, however, regarding the prevalence of needle fears and their impact on immunization compliance. In this cross-sectional survey, a convenience sample of parents (n=883) and children (n=1024) attending a public museum in Toronto, Canada answered questions about needle fears and non-compliance ...

Knowledge about children’s fears and the clinical phenomenology of anxiety disorders has increased dramatically over the past three decades following the expansion of the anxiety and phobic disorders categories in the DSM-III (American Psychiatric Association, 1980) and the development of the Fear Survey Schedule for Children-Revised (FSSC-R; Ollendick, 1983). The FSSC-R, the most frequently us...