L9: Health Psychology Flashcards
What is the COM-B framework?
- stands for Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation, and Behaviour
- It is a psychological model used to understand health-related behaviour
Give examples of factors that influence individual health-related behaviour based on the COM-B framework
- Examples include capability factors like knowledge and physical ability, opportunity factors like the environment and social support, and motivation factors like attitudes and emotions
How can the COM-B framework be used to develop interventions for behavior change?
- helps identify specific areas for intervention: enhancing capability, increasing opportunities, and boosting motivation to promote positive health-related behaviour change
Provide examples of studies that have used the COM-B to guide behavior-change interventions.
- One study developed an intervention to improve physical activity in older adults by using exercise classes, group activities, and motivational interviewing based on the COM-B framework
What is the role of behaviour in physical health?
- Behaviour plays a crucial role in physical health as it influences lifestyle choices and adherence to health-related practices
Name some psychological models used to understand health-related behaviour
- Examples include the Health Belief Model, Social Cognitive Theory, and the Transtheoretical Model
What are the approaches used to examine predictors of health-related behavior?
- Qualitative approaches involve in-depth exploration through interviews and focus groups
- Quantitative approaches use surveys and statistical analyses
Give examples of psychological factors affecting vaccination, help-seeking, and adherence behaviours
- vaccine hesitancy
- fear of medical procedures
- beliefs about treatment effectiveness
what is health psychology?
- field of psych that examines how psychological, behavioural & social factors affect health & illness
Why doesn’t everyone take up the offer of vaccination?
Acceptability of vaccines can be influenced by concerns about :
side effects
beliefs about vaccine safety
views on age appropriateness
social norms
What were the key findings from the exploratory research on HPV vaccine attitudes?
- generally positive views towards HPV vaccine, concerns about side effects, worries about granting sexual activity permission
- preference for behaviour change over vaccination in some case
How was the COVID-19 vaccine acceptability study conducted?
- study involved an online survey with 1,500 UK adults
- assessing demographics, vaccine attitudes, and intentions using Likert scales and free-text responses
What were the main predictors of COVID-19 vaccine uptake in the follow-up study?
- Intention, social norms, perceived necessity of the vaccine, and perceived safety were all associated with COVID-19 vaccine uptake
What were some reasons given for being unvaccinated in the COVID-19 vaccine acceptability study?
- Concerns about side effect
- perceived lack of research
- skepticism about the vaccine being ‘experimental’
What are the barriers and facilitators to vaccine acceptance?
- concerns about side effects, lack of perceived research, and experimental nature.
- Facilitators: include previous vaccination behaviour, perceived need, and social norms
What factors predicted 70% of the variance in COVID-19 vaccine intentions?
- Previous flu vaccination behaviour/intention, specific beliefs about the COVID-19 vaccine (social norms, necessity, safety, information adequacy)
- free-text responses focusing on protection
- ending the pandemic
- confidence in vaccine/authority
- safety concerns
Why don’t people always seek help quickly when they have symptoms that could be serious?
- Non-recognition of symptom seriousness is a common patient-mediated factor leading to delays in seeking help for potential serious symptoms
What are some reasons for late diagnosis of cancer?
- non-recognition of symptom seriousness
- misinterpretation of symptoms
- delays in seeking medical help
What are the health psychology contributions to understanding help-seeking behaviour?
contributes by
- developing theories
- assessing public knowledge of symptoms
- exploring barriers and facilitators to help-seeking
- describing social inequalities
- developing interventions to promote timely help-seeking
What methods were used in the study on lung cancer in non-smokers?
- used qualitative methods, including telephone interviews with lung cancer patients (smokers and non-smokers) to compare their experiences of diagnosis and help-seeking
What is the Common Sense Model of Self-regulation in Health & Illness?
- involves cognitive illness representations (identity, timeline, cause, control, consequences, coherence)
- emotional illness representations
- coping procedures
coping behaviour appraisal - illness outcomes
- emotional outcomes
What are the implications of the study on lung cancer experiences for help-seeking?
- Perceived urgency drives help-seeking
- low concern reduces symptom vigilance
- managing non-specific symptoms is challenging
- safety-netting is crucial to encourage urgency without unnecessary worry
Why doesn’t everyone take their medication as prescribed?
- non-adherence to medication can be influenced by various factors, including physical and psychological capability, motivation, and external opportunities
- there are intentional & unintentional reasons for non-adherence, and tailoring interventions to individual patient needs is important
How can adherence to medication be classified using the COM-B framework?
- adherence to medication can be classified using the COM-B framework
- which examines capability (physical and psychological factors), motivation (reflective and automatic brain processes), and opportunity (physical and social external factors)
