Relationships among selected psychological variables and medical diagnostic categories

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship of two medical diagnostic categories, gastrointestinal and respiratory disorders, to the psychological variables of state and trait anxiety, locus of control and amount of coping. Moderator variables pertinent to this study and used as measures were Gender, Age, GPA, Ethnic Status, Education Level and Chronicity of illness. Five research questions were posed to address the relationships of these variables. The study was carried out using undergraduate and graduate students at Montana State University (MSU) in Bozeman, Montana. Demographic and statistical data were collected and analysis of those data were presented in both tabular and narrative form. The psychological inventories used in this study were purchased or used with consent to measure the outcome variables. Measures of internal consistency were computed for all of these inventories. Major findings suggest that in the case of gastrointestinal illness there is a significantly higher amount of reported state anxiety when compared to the control group. The respiratory group also showed an increased level of state anxiety when compared to the control group, but not to a statistically significant degree. Of the moderator variables, gender accounted for a significant proportion of variance in each of the four outcome variables, though this is of somewhat limited utility as only two of the four full regressions accounted for a significant amount of variance. The general conclusion drawn from this result is that males appear to have reported a lesser amount of anxiety and acknowledged less overall coping skills than the females in this study. There were no interactions between diagnostic categories and moderator variables which accounted for a significant amount of variance in any of the four outcome variables.