The long-term objective of this project is to identify behaviural factors that underlie the development of cardiovascular risk in young adults. Based upon the evidence that anger, hostility, and self-focus are related to CHD risk, the aim of this study is to assess and describe anger experience, anger expression and self- references from tape-recorded structured interviews. A further aim is to assess how these factors are related to data already collected on life events and perceived stress, social support, and other psychosocial risk factors, as well as primary risk factors including blood pressure, serum cholesterol, and cigarette smoking. The proposed project is an extension of CARDIA, a prospective, epidemiological study of CHD risk factors in young adults, ages 18- 30. From the 5116 CARDIA participants, a 33% sample of 1688 will be randomly selected which will have approximately equal number of males and females, blacks and whites, and high and low education. From each of the baseline structured interviews, we will score 18 questions for self-references, perceived pressure, anger experience, and anger expression. The anger measures will be related to other measures of anger-in and hostility in order to establish their validity, and the interrelationship of these factors will be assessed separately for each of the SES categories. A major focus of the analyses will be to describe SES differences in how pressure is perceived, how anger is experienced and expressed, and how reference to self underlies these processes. A further analytic objective is to difine a cluster of behavioral and psychosocial factors that predicts changes in primary risk factors.
