A PRELIMINARY-REPORT ON THE EFFECTS OF VIDEOTAPE PREPARATIONS FOR CORONARY-ARTERY BYPASS-SURGERY ON ANXIETY AND SELF-EFFICACY - A SIMULATION AND VALIDATION WITH COLLEGE-STUDENTS

An experiment was conducted that used a role-playing methodology with college students to explore the relative effectiveness of three prepar atory videotapes for reducing the anxiety and increasing the self-effi cacy beliefs of individuals faced with the imminent prospect of underg oing coronary artery bypass surgery (CABS). All three tapes were desig ned to provide comparable, accurate sensory and procedural information . In one of the tapes, a nurse provides all information. In the other tapes, actual CABS patients describe their experiences in one of two m anners. In the mastery tape, the hospital recovery period is portrayed essentially as a steady upward progression with little mention of pro blems. In comparison, the coping tape portrays the hospital recovery p eriod as having more ups and downs, and the patients mention some conc erns and problems with which they are coping. Subjects, via imagery in duction, were asked to imagine how they would feel if they were hospit alized and scheduled for surgery the next morning. Results indicated t hat subjects randomly assigned to view any of the experimental tapes r eported less anxiety and increased self-efficacy for performing the re commended recovery behaviors relative to no-tape controls. In addition , subjects in the mastery-tape condition indicated significantly less anxiety than those in either the coping-tape or the nurse-tape conditi ons, who in turn did not differ from each other. The possibility that the videotape effects on anxiety were mediated by self-efficacy belief s was also examined.