Predicting adolescent eating and activity behaviors: The role of social norms and personal agency.

Abstract

Guided by the theory of planned behavior, this 2-week longitudinal study examined health behaviors in a sample of 279 adolescents. Social norms and perceived behavioral control (PBC) were tested as predictors of self-reported intentions and behaviors in 2 domains, eating and physical activity. Differentiating, as opposed to aggregating, parent and peer norms provided unique information. For PBC, the authors distinguished global causality beliefs from self-related agency beliefs and intraself (effort, ability) from extraself (parents, teachers) means. Intraself agency beliefs strongly predicted healthy intentions, whereas intraself causality beliefs had a negative influence. Patterns differed somewhat across behaviors and gender. Results highlight theoretical issues and provide potential targets for research on health promotion programs for youth.

Social-cognitive predictors of dietary behaviors in South Korean men and women

“…However, women appear also to be more health conscious and are more likely to change nutrition behaviors due to health-related concerns than men (Fagerli & Wandel, 1999). The consistent findings of gender differences in the amounts and kinds of foods consumed may therefore also reflect differences in health-related dietary self-regulation (Grogan et al, 1997;Resnicow et al, 1997;Wood Baker, Little, & Brownell, 2003). Analyzing gender differences in dietary behaviors from a health behavior theory perspective may therefore provide a key to understanding gender differences in food consumption.…”

The proof is in the eating: subjective peer norms are associated with adolescents’ eating behaviour

“…The 'important others' operationalization aggregates perceived peer norms with perceived norms of parents, siblings, teachers, health professionals and perhaps other referents. Such an aggregation may obscure the importance of a single referent group (28) -in this case, peers. As shown above, there is sufficient evidence that peer group expectations play an important role in adolescent eating, but the role of adolescents' perceptions of these expectations may be underestimated by the aggregation of different referents (potentially including less-or non-important referents) (28,30) .…”

“…Such an aggregation may obscure the importance of a single referent group (28) -in this case, peers. As shown above, there is sufficient evidence that peer group expectations play an important role in adolescent eating, but the role of adolescents' perceptions of these expectations may be underestimated by the aggregation of different referents (potentially including less-or non-important referents) (28,30) . Importantly, research has shown that the relationship between norms and behaviour exists particularly when people identify with the norm referent group (30,31) , and adolescents are likely to identify more strongly with their peers than with other referents.…”

Gender Differences in Social Network Influence among Injection Drug Users: Perceived Norms and Needle Sharing

“…Perceived norms are related to the adoption of many healthrelated behaviors including adolescent drug use, college student alcohol consumption, and eating behaviors. [13][14][15] Perceived Norms and HIV Risk Behavior Whereas there are many published studies examining the relationship between perceived norms and risky sex behaviors, less attention has been given to the association between perceived norms and injection practices. [16][17][18] Using a mixedmethod approach, Friedman et al conducted an exploratory assessment of the relationship between IDU behaviors and the behaviors of their drug acquaintances.…”