Question

While modifying factors and cues to action have an indirect role in behavior change, the Health Belief Model suggests that two constructs directly influence health behavior. Name and give a brief description of those two primary constructs and their sub-constructs.

Answer 1

• The HBM was spelled out in terms of four constructs representing the perceived threat and net benefits: perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived benefits, and perceived barriers.
• The following constructs of the health behavior are proposed to change amongst people and anticipate engagement in wellbeing related practices (e.g., getting inoculated, getting screened for asymptomatic ailments, working out).
• Perceived severity:-One's opinion of how serious a condition and its consequences are.
• Perceived Susceptibility:-One's opinion of chances of getting a condition
• Perceived Benefits-One's belief in the efficacy of the advised action to reduce risk or seriousness of impact.For example, individuals who believe that wearing sunscreen prevents skin cancer are more likely to wear sunscreen than individuals who believe that wearing sunscreen will not prevent the occurrence of skin cancer.
• Perceived Barriers-One's opinion of the tangible and psychological costs of the advised action.Perceived barriers to taking action include the perceived inconvenience, expense, danger (e.g., side effects of a medical procedure) and discomfort (e.g., pain, emotional upset) involved in engaging in the behavior.For instance, lack of access to affordable health care and the perception that a flu vaccine shot will cause significant pain may act as barriers to receiving the flu vaccine.
• Perceived severity combined with perceived susceptibility form a perceived threat which can directly influence how people process health information and how motivated they may be to engage in a particular behavior.
• The perceived severity of consequences may relate to an anticipated event that may occur in the future, or to an operant state such as a pre-existing health problem. In essence, perceived severity is the perception of how serious a health problem or disease is if one were to contract it.
• The last two constructs were added as research about the HBM evolved:-
• Cue to action - This is the stimulus needed to trigger the decision-making process to accept a recommended health action. These cues can be internal (e.g., chest pains, wheezing, etc.) or external (e.g., advice from others, illness of family member, newspaper article, etc.).
• Self-efficacy - This refers to the level of a person's confidence in his or her ability to successfully perform a behavior. This construct was added to the model most recently in mid-1980. Self-efficacy is a construct in many behavioral theories as it directly relates to whether a person performs the desired behavior.