Understanding Individual Motivations for Health Behavior Change

Many theories have been proposed over the years to explain the individual motivations toward changing behaviors in order to maintain health. These theories differ in the concepts related to the motivation and the reasons for seeking healthy behaviors. Social cognitive theory (SCT) for instance helped researchers to understand the motivation factors that influence individual health behaviors and these factors are self-efficacy, outcome, expectation, and knowledge. They said that changing behaviors takes time, needs efforts and encouragement. First, self-efficacy is the ability of an individual to make a change in his behaviors for better outcome and this concept depend on person experiences, skills, and willingness to perform and change action.

Second, the concept of outcome is concern with meeting the expectation to change the behaviors. For example, regular use of condom will reduce the risk of pregnancy by 80-90% as well as the risk of sexual transmitted infection. Third, with expectation individual will predict the consequences of changing the behaviors such as following a healthy life-style (exercise regularly and eating balanced diet) will reduce the risk of heart diseases. The last concept is knowledge and that is, to understand the risk and the benefit of taking the action toward health. A person needs to know how to eat healthy (food are or aren’t healthy) in order to maintain weight and health. Factors may affect individual decision about changing behaviors such as the social environment. For instance, if a person is living in unsafe neighbors, with lack of facilities that enable him to exercise and lack of access to healthy food, he is unable to maintain a healthy life-style. The ability to sustain behaviors is also a very essential factor as well as the intuition to perform the action. Self-control, knowing when to start, stop and how much the person can tolerate in order to meet his

From the standpoint of Bandura’s social cognitive theory and through the constructs of that theory. What make mothers use (CAM) for their children and what factors may affect their decision to choose CAM? Majority of mothers use CAM for their children because it was recommended by their mothers, family members, or friends (Araz & Bulbul, 2011). Thus, social-influence may affect the decision of health-related action as well as the person decision usually is influenced by the loved one and the support system such as friends in the society. While others use CAM because they think it is effective and safe to be used for children (Al-Mendalawi & Jan, 2009). Mothers use CAM for themselves as assess and evaluate its effectiveness and safety, then they use it for their children (self-efficacy). Other factor that affect mothers’ decision about CAM use is the easy access to various types of CAM approaches in the community (Al-Mendalawi & Jan, 2009). In clinic, health provider could apply this theory to assist patient to make decision in regard to his health. For example, health care provider could assist patients to make decision about the heart surgery by explaining the benefit and the risk of the surgery, then he has the option to either accept or