According to Andersen and Newman (1973), paying a visit to a health facility is determined by three sets of factors: (1) predisposing factors such as age, gender, race/ethnic group and social status; (2) enabling factors include conditions that facilitate or inhibit the use of health services such as insurance coverage, income, distance to the health centre; availability of regular source of care and, (3) need or health status variables which may include perceived need and urgency, level of distress and presence of psychiatric co-morbidity The health belief model (HBM) suggested by Rosenstock (1966) assumes that consumer attitudes and beliefs are important determinants of health action. Leavitt (1979) reports that, within this framework, beliefs …show more content…
Galvin and Fan (1975), however, argue that regardless of the model used, all studies face the common problems of classification of health services utilisation, finding operational indices to measure each type of use and finding predictors of and explanation for various types of use. Comparison of the variables in various different models used in studies on use of health-care services reveals that there is a large overlap in the variables used in the models (Cummings et al., 1980). Furthermore, findings of studies reporting on the use of health facilities are inconsistent and the contributing factors vary from one study to another, perhaps because of the varying in methodologies used, differing medical care systems, different time periods and the rhetoric of …show more content…
The first, used individual attributes, incorporates social and behavioural variables to predict utilisation behaviour. For example, the above-mentioned Rosenstock’s health-belief model, which suggests that the readiness to take health action is determined by perceived susceptibility and severity of a health problem, perceived benefits and barriers to taking action and cause which instigate appropriate behaviour, exemplifies this approach. The second approach variables derived from organisational, economic, and ecological frameworks. The concepts of service availability, coordination, accessibility, and methods of financing refer to ecological and functional relationships between economic or community resources and the recipients of services. The third approach assumes that use behaviour is a joint function of both personal attributes and organisational