An examination of the Health Belief Model when applied to Diabetes mellitus.

Previous research studies which have used Health Belief Model (I-IBM)
dimensions in order to understand health outcomes have many problems
which prevent clear and reliable conclusions about their results. Studies
about diabetes-related health beliefs have proved to be no exception to this
rule. The research presented here is an attempt to address some of these
problems which include the lack of satisfactory scales to measure
diabetes-related health beliefs, the use of heterogeneous samples of patients
with different disease and regimen types, and the lack of prospective studies
in which health beliefs are used to predict outcomes in the future. Another
major problem which applies to all HBM research is that the relationships
between the various dimensions of the model have not been determined. As
such, the HBM is not a model at all but a catalogue of variables. The
present research aimed to specify the relationships between the components
of the HBM and attempted to integrate self-efficacy and locus of control
beliefs in order to extend the model and improve the amount of outcome
variance explained.
Scales to measure diabetes-specific health beliefs were developed from the
responses of 187 tablet-treated outpatients with Type II diabetes. Health
beliefs were examined, on the one hand, in relation to other psychological
and behavioural variables, and on the other, for their sensitivity to change
after educational and treatment interventions. Both cross-sectional and
longitudinal study designs were employed. The relationships between the
HBM components themselves were explored in a linear and non-linear
fashion.