Self Efficacy Paper

Determinants of Health information Use for Self-efficacy in Lifestyle modification.

Introduction

Various professional groups including health professionals, health educators, promoters and medical librarians (Pullen, Jones & Timm, 2011) are involved in numerous efforts to provide information and education to help people modify lifestyle behaviors needed to prevent as well as to live successfully with chronic diseases. This is being done through various information media including; traditional print media, mass media such as radio and television and the Internet. It is important that people make effective use of the information to achieve the desired lifestyle modifications.

The use of information refers to what people do with information

Self-efficacy is defined as a person’s perception of one’s ability to undertake a given task or behavior. Self-efficacy affects the choice of behaviour, settings in which behaviours are performed, and the amount of effort and persistence to be spent on performance of a specific task (Lawrence & Mcleroy, 1986) People who have high self-efficacy will be more likely to perform related behaviour than those with low self-efficacy. According to the Theory, Individuals form their self-efficacy beliefs by interpreting information primarily from four sources: mastery or direct experiences, vicarious experience, social persuasions and physiological reactions. Social persuasions include suggestions, exhortations, self-instructions, health promotions, health education and other interventions tailored to the information needs of the

Pearson Product Moment Correlation coefficient (r) was used to test the relationships between self-efficacy and health information access. Multiple Regression analysis was done to explore the predictive effect of socio-demographic variables on access to health information and self- efficacy. Self-efficacy was used as the dependent variable. Lifestyle modification information, demographic and disease profiles were the independent variables. The ‘Enter Method’ was used for the multiple regression analysis. Patients’ background characteristics and diseases variables were recorded and dichotomized 0 and 1. Reference categories are as follows: Gender Male 1(reference category). Age – older adulthood 45+ 1(reference category). Education –, Tertiary 1(reference category), Disease Type –HIV and AIDS 1(reference category). Duration of illness – Longer period 6 + years 1 (reference category). Duration of Treatment in Teaching Hospital – Longer period 6+ years 1 (reference category). All analyses were computed using SPSS Computer Software Package Version