Body figure perceptions and eating attitudes among Australian schoolchildren aged 8 to 12 years.

OBJECTIVE: How widespread is the desire for thinness among preadolescent Australian children and are there gender differences? METHOD: Two hundred forty-four children from Grades 3 to 6 completed the children's version of the Eating Attitudes Test (ChEAT), reported whether they had ever wanted to be thinner or tried to lose weight, and selected pictures ranging from thin to fat to depict their current and ideal body images. RESULTS: Fifty percent of girls and 33% of boys have wanted to be thinner, and 40% and 24%, respectively, have attempted to lose weight. Percentages of girls and boys scoring above the ChEAT screening threshold for anorexia risk were 14% and 8%, respectively. ChEAT scores, attitudes and behaviors, and current and ideal figure perceptions were significantly related to body mass index (BMI). DISCUSSION: Attitudes and behaviors were consistent with recent U.S. and Israeli findings that concerns about being overweight are prevalent among 8- to 12-year-olds. High ChEAT scores among Grade 3 children raised the question of whether very young children adequately understand this questionnaire.

Videotaped interviewing of non-English speakers: training for medical students with volunteer clients.

In a multicultural society such as Australia, with over 20% of its population born overseas, interpreters are often required to facilitate medical interviews. However, where a patient has some proficiency in English, medical interviews are sometimes conducted across the boundaries of culture and language. This is a report of an educational innovation to teach interviewing skills to pre-clinical medical students with the assistance of volunteers of non-English-speaking backgrounds. Pre-clinical students interviewed community volunteers on topics of general life history in a sequence of 16 tutorials. Each student conducted two interviews. Teaching methods included feedback from the volunteers, tutorial discussion facilitated by playback of videotapes, and modelling of skills by the teachers. Evaluations by volunteers and students indicated high satisfaction with the teaching methods and outcomes. Students gained confidence in interviewing people from different cultures. Evaluation of students' pairs of videotapes by an independent rater achieved satisfactory reliabilities and indicated significant gains in inquiry skills and the communication of positive attitudes. Skills in communicating empathy and in using simple language did not improve measurably.

Interviewing skills: self-evaluation by medical students.

In an independent learning project, 52 third-year medical students carried out a structured self-assessment of two videotaped psycho-social interviews they had conducted with volunteer clients 1 year earlier, as part of a previous course. The interviews had been conducted in small tutorials with feedback from their clients, fellow students and tutors, facilitated by videotape playback. During the sequence of 16 tutorials each student had carried out an early and a late interview and had observed and participated in the discussion of the interviews of 14 peers. Students were asked to tally the frequencies of various interview behaviours, to evaluate the quality of their behaviours, and to establish priorities for future learning. The videotapes were also reliably rated by an independent observer. Students' overall self-assessments correlated 0.46 with those of the independent observer. This correlation was higher than is typically reported in studies of the validity of self-assessment. In absolute terms, the students' mean rating of interviewing performance was 3.2 (adequate plus) which was significantly lower than the observer's mean of 3.6 (adequate to good). Results are discussed in terms of Gordon's (1992) two recommendations for improving the validity of self-assessments and two further suggestions, for paired comparisons and low-threat learning environments, are added.

Children's perceptions of their current and ideal body sizes and body mass index.

244 Australian schoolchildren aged between 8 and 12 years indicated their current and ideal body sizes by means of Collins' pictorial figures. Children's height and weight were also measured. Body-mass indices were calculated from these data, and percentile ranks estimated according to international reference data. Consistent with Collins' findings, 39% of girls and 26% of boys wanted to be thinner than they perceived themselves to be; however, this desire was strongly related to actual body size so the percentages were very different for weight categories established on the basis of Body Mass Index. In the overweight quartile, 76% of girls and 56% of boys wanted to be thinner, whereas in the underweight quartile only 10% of girls and no boys wanted to be thinner. The response of overweight children may be sensible, but the desire of some underweight girls to be even thinner is of concern. Some recent literature suggests that underweight individuals tend to overestimate their body sizes. About a half of our underweight children slightly overestimated their body sizes but only one child overestimated grossly.

Career motivations of male and female medical students.

Australian medical students (N = 645) were asked at the beginning of their training to rank the importance of a list of motivations relevant to their choice of medicine as a career. Both male and female students ranked the desire to help others as the most important motivation, closely followed by the scientific nature and the intellectual challenge of the profession of medicine. Both genders rated considerations of status and prestige as of low importance. These findings are similar to surveys from other countries that have reported altruism and intellectual challenge as prime motivations for both genders.

Retest reliability of the woodcock language proficiency battery.

The Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery: English Form was administered to 152 of the 478 students beginning medical studies at an Australian university in 1990 and 1991. Two years after admission 147 of the students were available for retest. Test-retest reliability coefficients ranged from .70 to .85 for the 8 subtests, .83 to .91 for the three cluster scores, and the coefficient for the Broad Language Cluster score was .95. The sample had deliberately over-represented students low in English language proficiency but the reliability coefficients were only slightly reduced when this bias was corrected by forming a representative sample of 72 students. The mean incremental gain on the Broad Language Cluster of 1.8 was statistically significant and corresponded closely to the 2.0 predicted from the test norms for a 2-year developmental period. These results support previous reports of the excellent psychometric properties of this instrument.

Effect of anxiety on performance in multiple choice examination.

Negative scoring of incorrectly answered multiple choice questions has logistic advantages, but may disadvantage anxious students. We therefore attempted to observe the effects of positive and negative marking of true/false questions on the examination performance of medical students with different levels of anxiety. Third-year medical students (141 men, 71 women) completed a Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory before an examination in pathology in 1994. Students knew there would be penalties for wrong answers in the first half of the examination and no penalties in the second half. Performance on the two halves was compared and effects of levels of anxiety assessed. Students reported slightly higher trait anxiety than American norms. Women students reported higher levels of anxiety than men, and levels for both genders were indicative of a moderately stressful situation. Trait anxiety was not associated with performance in either the negatively or positively marked halves of the examination. For women students, but not men, lower state anxiety was positively associated with higher performance on the negatively marked half of the examination (r = 0.29), but accounted for only 8% of the variance in scores. In our study, anxiety was correlated only slightly with results of a negatively marked examination. We conclude that anxious medical students are not unduly disadvantaged by this method of marking.

Interrater reliability of the scoring of the screening test of adolescent language.

Group administrations of the Screening Test of Adolescent Language have been successful in identifying students with English-language problems among groups of university students who include many recent immigrants from southeastern Asia. However, scoring several items requires subjective judgement. Accordingly, interrater reliability was investigated by having two independent examiners score the written responses of 299 first-year medical students at two Australian universities. The examiners produced very similar distributions of total scores with means of 20.36 and 19.36 and achieved a high agreement in the categorisation of students with English problems. The Spearman rank-order correlation of 0.83 was high and statistically significant from zero.

Patients' desire for information about anaesthesia: Australian attitudes.

Patients in a medium-sized Australian suburban general hospital were asked to complete a pre-operative questionnaire concerning their desire for information about their impending anaesthesia. The results are compared with those of Canadian and Scottish studies published recently. The Australian patients had a higher preference for information about complications, although some patients, mainly elderly, did not want to know about unpleasant aspects of peri-operative procedures or potential complications. As in the other countries, patients under the age of 50 years had a greater desire for information than those who were older (p < 0.05). All national groups accorded highest priority to meeting the anaesthetist before surgery. The results are discussed in relationship to the requirements for informed consent.

The effects of providing preoperative statistical anaesthetic-risk information.

Are patients who are provided with details about anaesthesia risks on the eve of surgery better informed, and does the information increase their anxiety? Forty (ASA Class I or II) patients scheduled for surgery requiring general anaesthesia were randomly allocated to either a routine or a detailed information group. Levels of anxiety were assessed by the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. Actual knowledge of risks was assessed by a special visual analogue scale. Patients had experienced an average of five previous anaesthetics and so most patients in both groups knew the risks of common complications such as nausea and sore throat and were able to represent them accurately on the visual analogue scale. The detailed group, however, had gained more accurate knowledge of the likelihood of two rare complications, death (P < 0.001) and serious tooth damage (P < 0.05). Notwithstanding, there was no difference between the groups in anxiety. Thus, provision of detailed information about the risks of the complications of general anaesthesia did increase patients' knowledge but did not increase patients' levels of anxiety.

Medical training and English language proficiency.

Concern is often expressed about the English language proficiency (ELP) of students engaged in professional training. This report assesses the ELP of the 1990 and 1991 intakes into medicine at the University of Sydney. A quick screening test and individual in-depth tests were used in a two-stage design. Admission to the course is highly competitive and most students are selected from the top 0.75% of Higher School Certificate results but 15% and 19% of the year cohorts were found to be below average in ELP. English proficiency was found to be consistently correlated with first- and second-year university results. Initiatives taken to support students with language disadvantages and to ensure that graduates will be able to communicate effectively with patients are outlined.

A study of the concurrent validity of the Screening Test of Adolescent Language with recent immigrants.

The concurrent validity of the Screening Test of Adolescent Language was investigated by correlating the total scores for 152 first-year medical students with their performances on the Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery. The sample included many recent immigrants from southeastern Asia who were not yet highly proficient in English. The Pearson correlation of .78 between the two measures was high and statistically significantly different from zero.