SearchPublisher and Institutes
You are here: Home :: Area CULI :: Linguistics and literature :: Communication science
Belinda Goodenough, Jennifer Ford
Self-reported use of humor by hospitalized pre-adolescent children to cope with pain-related distress from a medical intervention
This study addresses a measurement gap on the humor-pain interface in pre-adolescent children. 57 hospitalized children aged 6–12 years who had undergone a medical intervention completed measures of pain intensity and unpleasantness (Colored Analogue Scale), general pain coping style (Pain Coping Questionnaire), humor coping?creation, general, and painspecific (child version of the Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale, and a new measure, the Sydney Children’s Hospital Humor Coping Scale for Children). The results supported predictions that (a) use of pain-specific humor-coping would be positively associated with an adaptive problemfocused coping style, and (b) an emotion-focused pain coping style would be inversely related to use of humor coping. Results also supported the hypothesis that humor coping would be more strongly (and inversely) related to ratings of pain unpleasantness rather than sensory intensity. The data provide preliminary evidence for the reliability and validity of the Sydney Children’s Hospital Humor Coping Scale for Children.
Humor - International Journal of Humor Research, Walter de Gruyter
Print ISSN: 0933-1719
Volume: 18, 09/2005
Pages: 279 - 298