Question

Define the health behavior constructs and their interconnectedness.

Answer 1

Define the health behavior constructs and their interconnectedness

Behavioral sciences use constructs such as conscientiousness, intelligence, political power, self-esteem, and group culture, a psychological construct is a label for a domain of behaviors. ... A construct derives its scientific value from the shared meaning it represents for different people.

The Health Belief Model (HBM) was developed in the 1950's by social psychologists Hochbaum, Rosenstock and others, who were working in the U.S. Public Health Service to explain the failure of people participating in programs to prevent and detect disease. Later, the model was extended by others to study people's behavioral responses to health-related conditions.

Since this time, the Health Belief Model has evolved to address public health concerns and has been applied to a broad range of populations and health behaviors.

CONSTRUCT	DEFINITION
Perceived Susceptibility	Belief about getting a disease or condition
Perceived Severity	Belief about the seriousness of the condition, or leaving it untreated and its consequences
Perceived Benefits	Belief about the potential positive aspects of a health action
Perceived Barriers	Belief about the potential negative aspects of a particular health action
Cues to Action	Factors which trigger action
Self-Efficacy	Belief that one can achieve the behavior required to execute the outcome

• The HBM contains several constructs that are hypothesized to predict why people engage in prevention, screening, and/or controlling health conditions.
  • Personal characteristics, such as age, gender, and ethnicity modify individual perceptions, such as perceived susceptibility, severity, self-efficacy, and benefits & barriers.
  • Perceived susceptibility and severity of a health condition together, have been labeled as "perceived threat."
  • Perceived benefits help reduce perceived threat about a health behavior. Perceived barriers impede health behaviors. Benefits minus barriers support health behavior change.
  • Self-Efficacy influences perceived threat (perceived susceptibility and severity) and perceived benefits minus perceived barriers, which support initiation of health behavior change.
  • Cues in the environment trigger action and act on individual perceptions, such as perceived benefits, and perceived susceptibility.

Integrated Behavioral Model

Constructs

• Intention or decision to perform the behavior
• Definition(s):
  • An indication of an individual's readiness or decision to perform the behavior
  • The most important predictor a desired behavior will actually occur
  • A function of attitudes toward a behavior and perceived norms and personal agency toward that behavior
  • Similar to intention in TRA / TPB

(The Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) and Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) were created earlier than the Integrated Behavioral Model (IBM) (Guo, 2007).Similar to TRA/TPB, the most important determinant is motivation/intention. Without motivation/intention, an individual is less likely to carry out a behavior.)

• Attitude, Experiential Attitude, Instrumental Attitude
• Definition(s)
  • Attitude refers to an individual's overall perception of favorableness or un-favorableness towards a behavior comprised of affective and cognitive dimensions
  • Experiential attitude (or affect) is the individual's emotional response to the idea of performing the behavior
  • Instrumental attitude (or cognitive) is determined by beliefs about outcomes of behavior

• Perceived norm, Injunctive norm, Descriptive norm
• Definition(s)
  • Perceived norm refers to the social pressure one feels to perform or not perform a particular behavior
  • Injunctive norm (similar to subjective norm) refers to normative beliefs about what others think one should do and motivation to comply
  • Descriptive norm refers to perceptions about what others in one's social or personal networks are doing. Meant to capture situations where there is strong social identity

• Personal agency, Perceived control, Self-efficacy
• Definition(s)
  • Personal agency refers to individual's capability to originate and direct actions for given purposes.
  • Self-efficacy is an individual's belief in his/her effectiveness in performing specific tasks as well as by their actual skill
  • Perceived control is an individual's perceived amount of control over behavioral performance. It is determined by control beliefs (an individual's perception of the degree to which various environmental factors make it easy or difficult to perform a behavior)

Similarities in constructs across TRA / TPB, IBM

TRA / TPB	IBM
Intention to perform a behavior	Intention or decision to perform a behavior
Attitude - Evaluation of behavioral outcomes	Attitude - Instrumental attitude
Subjective norm	Injunctive norm
Perceived control - Control beliefs	Perceived control - Control beliefs