W5 Health behaviours Flashcards
Health behaviour
= any activity undertaken for the purpose of preventing or detecting disease or for improving health/wellbeing (Conner & Norman, 1996)
Changing health behavior
= link between health behavior and mortality. Health behaviors are hard to change, they can become habits. Often comes with immediate costs and long-term benefits. Tendency to maximize immediate rewards and ignore long-term benefits. These behaviors can also be reinforced by social environment + peers.
Non-communicable disease (NCD)
(kills over 41 million) Health behaviors are modifiable risk factors for NCDs, important to reduce the risk of NCDs. (cancer, cardiovascular diseases, chronic respiratory diseases, diabetes)
Types of Health behaviors
Protective (positive) (exercise, personal hygiene, eating well) and Risky (negative) (binge eating/drinking, smoking, vaping, unsafe sex) health behavior.
Predicting and Explaining health behavior
Individual differences = demographics, emotional, social, genetic factors, perceived symptoms, cognition (peoples talks, beliefs and attitudes towards their health), personality, access to health care.
Social cognitive models of health behavior change
Individual differences (i.e., social cognitions) = social cognition about health includes = beliefs attitudes, knowledge etc. Targets of interventions to change behavior.
Binge drinking
Binge drinking is more common in Scotland (37.3%) followed by Wales (30.4%) and England (26.2%)
In England, highest proportion of binge drinking on heaviest drinking days was in the Northwest = 33% of drinkers in the Northwest of England “binged” alcohol on their heaviest drinking day
Theory of planned behavior
= Subjective norms + attitude + perceived behaviour control impact intention which therefore impacts behaviour
Theory of Planned behavior predict binge drinking (Norman & Conner, 2006)
Predicting intentions = Attitudes (+), self-efficacy (+) and perceived control (-) as significant predictors. No significant effect of subjective norms.
Predicting behaviour = Intentions (+), self-efficacy (+) and past binge drinking (+) as significant predictors.
Planned Behavior, binge drinking (Norman, 2019)
Message (interventions)
= Exposure to ToPB messages resulted in more negative cognitions about binge drinking:
- Weaker intentions to engage in binge drinking.
- More negative attitudes towards binge drinking.
= However, no effect on the frequency of binge drinking at follow-up, in line with the intention behavior gap.
Interventions targeting ToPB constructs can successfully change attitudes, norms self-efficacy and intentions but additional work needed to bridge the intention-behaviour gap
Key findings on Planned behavior and binge drinking
Attitude was the most important predictor of binge drinking. Attitude and intention could be change but it didn’t translate into behavioral change.
Social Norm Theory (SNT)
An individual’s behavior is influenced by the perception of how their peers think and act. Social comparisons are linked to the potential influence of social norms for changing health behavior. If a peer group engages in healthy behaviors, then this becomes a source of normative influence.
Social norms theory to predict binge drinking
Overestimation of drinking norms = Nearly half of students (42%) incorrectly believe that their peers regularly drink 6 or more drinks in one session (Robinson et al., 2014).
Students who correctly identify that most students drink less than 6 drinks in a session are more likely to drink responsibly (Robinson et al., 2014)
Social Norms theory binge drinking
(Robinson et al, 2014) = Norm messages to correct misperceptions of social norms-related behaviors (i.e., drinking norms).
= influenced normative drinking perceptions but only among norms believers.
= ineffective for participants who overestimated peers’ drinking at baseline.
= not successful in increasing intentions to drink responsibly. (viewed as not credible)
Impersonal nature of social norms messages -> unsuccessful at changing drinking behavior.
Personalised normative feedback ( Neighbors, et al 2004)
Personalised feedback about own drinking, perceived drinking norm, actual drinking norm.
= led to change in perceived drinking norms, reduced drinking.