Are diet-specific compensatory health beliefs predictive of dieting intentions and behaviour?

Abstract

1Compensatory health beliefs (CHBs) -beliefs that an unhealthy behaviour can be 2 compensated for by healthy behaviour -are hypothesised to be activated automatically 3 to help people resolve conflicts between their desires (e.g. eat chocolate) and their long-4 term goals (e.g. dieting). The aim of the present research was to investigate diet-5 specific CHBs within the context of a theoretical framework, the Health Action Process 6 Approach (HAPA), to examine the extent to which diet-specific CHBs contribute to 7 dieting intentions and dietary intake. Seventy five dieting women were recruited in 8Switzerland and England and were asked to complete measures of diet-specific CHBs, 9 risk perception, outcome expectancies, self-efficacy, intention, and behaviour. Path 10 modelling showed that, overall, diet-specific CHBs were not related to dieting 11 intentions (ß = .10) or behaviour (ß = .06) over and above variables specified in the 12 HAPA. However, risk perception moderated the relationship between diet-specific 13CHBs and intention (ß = .26). Diet-specific CHBs positively predicted intention in 14 women with high risk perception, but not in women with low risk perception. This 15 positive relationship might be explained by the assumption that CHBs play different 16 roles at different stages of the health-behaviour change process. Future studies should 17 further examine moderators and stage-specific differences of the associations between 18CHBs, intention and health-behaviour change. 19 20

Do compensatory health beliefs predict behavioural intention in a multiple health behaviour change context? Evidence in individuals with cardiovascular diseases?

“…Interestingly, CHBs positively predicted intentions for IWCD with high-risk perception, corroborating Radtke et al (2014)'s observations. According to this study, CHBs may act as a motivator at an early stage of the health behaviour change process, where risk perceptions arise as a starting point.…”

“…Moreover, previous studies reported low scale homogeneity (e.g., α = .44 Radtke et al, 2014). One reason could be that CHBs scales aggregated beliefs about different compensatory behaviours (e.g., unhealthy diet may be compensated by skipping main dish, or by being physically active, Radtke et al, 2014), which is problematic because they may differ in several respects (e.g., required effort, perceived efficacy, McEachan, Lawton, & Conner, 2010).…”

“…CHBs may negatively contribute to the intention formation process, independently from behaviour-specific factors (self-efficacy, risk perceptions, outcome expectancies) (Berli, Loretini, Radtke, Hornung, & Scholz, 2014;Fleig et al, 2015;Radtke, Scholz, Keller, & Hornung, 2012), and through the self-efficacy mediating role (Matley & Davies, 2017). CHBs may also interact with self-efficacy (they negatively predict intention when self-efficacy is low, Storm et al, 2016) and risk perception (they positively predict intention when risk perception is high, Radtke, Kaklamanou, Scholz, Hornung, & Armitage, 2014). However, CHBs' effects have not been examined on IWCD in an MHBC context, but only in healthy populations with low/medium intentions for behaviours change (Radtke et al, 2012;Berli et al, 2014;Fleig et al, 2015;Storm et al, 2016).…”

Beyond motivation: identifying targets for intervention to increase hearing aid use in adults

“…The principal tenets of the HAPA, and in particular the distinction between motivation and volition, have been supported across a variety of health behaviours, including physical activity (Perrier et al 2012;Hattar, Pal, and Hagger 2016), healthy eating (Radtke et al 2014), smoking cessation (Radtke et al 2012), alcohol consumption (Murgraff et al 2003) and in chronic illness and disability (Schwarzer et al 2011). To date, however, the HAPA model has not been applied in the domain of hearing health care.…”

Beyond single behaviour theory: Adding cross‐behaviour cognitions to the health action process approach

“…This holds true even when behaviour‐specific social cognitions (e.g., outcome expectancies, self‐efficacy) are accounted for. However, CHBs were not found to add to the prediction of behaviour when investigated within the framework of the HAPA (Berli et al ., ; Radtke, Kaklamanou, Scholz, Hornung, & Armitage, ; Radtke et al ., ; Schwarzer, ). Based on these findings, we were tested whether CHBs were negatively associated with physical activity intentions (Berli et al ., ) and self‐regulatory strategies.…”