Foundational knowledge - Traditional Theories and Models of Behavior Change
The theories most used in lifestyle interventions with good scientific results are Social Cognitive Theory (SCT), Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), The Health Belief Model (HBM) and the Trans-Theoretical Model (TTM). Read the compilation in this book!
4. The Health Belief Model (HBM)
The Health Belief Model (HBM) implies that a person's belief in a threat of an illness or disease coupled with a person's confidence in the effectiveness of the recommended health behavior or action will predict the likelihood the person to adopt the behavior (Ogden, 20112). HBM is composed of six constructs, as follows:
- Perceived susceptibility refers to a person's subjective perception of the risk of developing an illness or disease. There is wide variability of how people perceive the chances of developing a disease (Ogden, 20112).
- Perceived severity refers to a person's feelings on how severe an illness will be. When evaluating the severity, a person often considers the health consequences (e.g., disease or death) and social consequences (e.g. social relationships) (Ogden, 20112).
- Perceived benefits refers to a person's assessment of the effectiveness of behaviors to reduce the threat of disease. The course of action in preventing (or curing) the disease is based on the perception that action is beneficial (Ogden, 20112).
- Perceived barriers refers to a person's thoughts on the obstacles to performing a recommended health action. The person evaluates the usefulness of the actions against the idea that it may be expensive, dangerous, unpleasant, time-consuming, or inconvenient (Ogden, 20112).
- Cue to action refers to the stimulus needed to trigger the decision to accept a recommended health action. The cues can be internal (disease symptoms.) or external (e.g., advice from others, illness of someone close newspaper article, etc.) (Ogden, 20112).
- Self-efficacy refers to the person's confidence in their ability to undertake the behavior (Ogden, 20112).
Health Belief Model (Ogden, 20112)
HBM model was found to be successful in mHealth apps targeting HIV testing (Evans et al., 2016), screening for cervical cancer (Khademolhosseini et al., 2017), tobacco control (Ali et al., 2020), and tracking infectious diseases – such as COVID-19 (Michel et al., 2020).