LB - Attitudes and Health

• Attitudes

  Relatively stable predispositions toward socially significant factors

  3 components: emotional, behavioural, cognitive

  can be explicit (conscious), implicit (unconscious) and generalizable
• How are attitudes formed

  • early socialization
  • direct experiences
  • observations
  • learning
  • operant conditioning = reinforcement, social norms etc.
• Measuring Attitudes

  • attitude scales
  • Thurston (1928) - time consuming, low reliability
  • Likert (1932) - acquiescence response
  • Guttman (1944) - measures single unidimensional trait
• Measuring implicit attitudes

  • bias in language
  • discourse analysis
  • attitude priming - implicit association tasks
• Traditional Approach - Public Health Intervention

  1. Goal = (inform on health risk)
  2. Behaviour change
• Attitudinal Model of Behaviour

  1. Inform on HR
  2. Internal and external motivational change, mobilisation of skills and resources, beliefs around message change
  3. BC
• Protection motivational theory

  1. Threat appraisal (perceived susceptibility/severity) AND coping appraisal (response/self efficacy)
  2. protective motivation
  3. coping response (adaptive or maladaptive)
• Theory of Planned behaviour

  1. Behavioural attitude AND subjective norms AND perceived behavioural control
  2. behavioural intention
  3. new behaviour
• Stages of change model

  1. pre-contemplation
  2. contemplation
  3. prepare
  4. action
  5. maintain
  6. termination
• Types of Public Health Intervention

  • Primary: pre-at-risk
  • secondary: at-risk
  • tertiary: problem group