Question

Explain Rosenstock's Health Belief Theory

Answer 1

The Health Belief Model was basically developed in the late 1950s by a team of social psychologists lead by Rosenstock. It was developed to understand the behavioral responses of people towards different health-related conditions. The model states that there are four interacting factors that influence the perception (thought process) of an individual towards health concerns. These four factors can be broadly categorized as perceived susceptibility, perceived severity of health threat, perceived benefits and percieved barriers and cues to action.

Perceived susceptibility can be defined as the person's belief about the chances of getting the disease and face consequences. Perceived severity is nothing but their idea about how serious the consequences of the disease can be. Perceived benefits are the person's ideas that they think will benefit them from taking positive actions. However, perceived barriers are the potential negative thoughts about the particular health action.

The model also states that the cues to action are the potential factor involved in triggering the action and is mandatory to bring the change. In short, Rosenstock's Health Belief Theory proposes the concept that a person will instantly respond and take action if they feel that they are susceptible to sickness, if they feel that the condition can have some serious consequences, if they feel that some prior action could potentially reduce the susceptibility, if they feel that the overall benefit is not worth the cost of treatment and last, if they believe that the overall surrounding are encouraging change.

Later on when the model was revised, one more point called Self-Efficacy was included.