The health belief model and participation in programmes for the early detection of breast cancer: a comparative analysis

Abstract

Extravagant claims have been made about the power of the Health Belief Model (HBM) to explain both decisions to adopt patterns of health behaviour and to use preventive health services. However, studies where information on beliefs are collected before information on behaviour are not common. The analyses presented here are based on prospective studies examining how far the variables which make up the HBM predict attendance at (i) a class teaching breast self-examination and (ii) a clinic providing mammography. The results show that different dimensions of the HBM are amongst the best predictors of attendance at each of the different services although the overall variance explained by the HBM in both sets of analysis was small.