Health belief model

Health belief model

Study in the 1950s looked at why people did or did not go for TB screenin, indicated that main consideration was how serious people percieved TB to be, this effected how people went about to deal with it, if it was percieved to be serious, logic thing would be to go for the screening. From this study, Becker and Rosenstock (Becker et al) developed the HBM.

HBM is a cognitive model which identifies a number of factors that show the possibility of somone adopting a health related behaviour.

There are two main aspects of this threat, the perceived seriousness( will it actually kill me?) and the percieved susceptibility ( Am I likely to get it?). On top of the percieved threat, there is also the cost-benefits analysis, which psychologists argue effects many of our behaviours. To put it simply, the individuals weighs up the benefits and costs of adopting a healthy behaviour, if the benefits outweigh the costs, individual is likely to adopt that behaviour. Another factor that the model takes into consideration is demographic variables that may come to influence our decisions ( such as age, gender, location).Aswell as external and internal cues that are present, can help us to adopt/not adopt health behaviours. The model also takes into consideration social aspects such as culture to look at the effects it has when developing a health behaviour.

Beckers study on compliance…