Health behavior: theoretical and methodical problems of sociological measurement

Abstract

The article is devoted to a comparative analysis of approaches to the study of health behavior that exist in modern Russian and foreign sociology; identifying theoretical and methodical problems; designation of directions for the development of this issue. The article shows that specific theoretical and methodical problems generated in various approaches can be generalized into two groups. The first correlates with problems of cognitive adequacy of the variables used for analysis. It includes such problems as adapting variables to measure social attitudes or behavior; choosing the optimal way to empirically interpret indicators of health behavior; identifying discrepancies between self-assessments and the results of “objective” measurement. The second group of problems is related to the complexity of the relationships between the components of such behavior, which includes: the mediation of the relationships between the components of health behavior by indicators of a different nature; identification of factors that influence health behavior in different directions, their specificity for various health practices; implementation of conceptual representations in multidimensional data analysis models. The article pays special attention to typological studies as one of the important directions in the development of the problem of sociological measurement of health behavior, which makes it possible to overcome many theoretical and methodical problems. In particular, the advisability of a priori typology of the population being studied is emphasized; testing a number of indicators of health behavior as type-forming attributes; using the experience of conducting typological analysis in subject fields close to the field of health.