A QUANTITATIVE APPROACH TO PREDICT ... - SuSanA

instructing the person on appropriate behaviours. 67 Cognitive models in the first place,
assume that the individual being rational, evaluate the cost and benefit of a behaviour
before making the intention to behave in a certain way. 68 Examples of cognitive models
are Health Belief Model (HBM) and Protection Motivation Theory (PMT). The HBM
which was developed in 1966 by Rosenstock, was initially to predict preventive health
behaviours but now used in a wide range of health-related behaviours. The main
components of HBM in the prediction are the individual’s perception of his chances of
attaining an illness, the severity of the sickness, the cost and benefit involved in
carrying out a behaviour, cues for action, health motivation and perceived control. 69
PMT on the other hand, was developed as an expanded form of the health belief model
by Rogers. 70 PMT is based on perceived severity of a disease, perceived vulnerability to
illness, response effectiveness of a certain health action and self efficacy expectation
towards a health action. 71 These cognitive theories have been criticised that they
emphasis much on the individual and does not say anything on the role that the social
and the economic environment play in predicting the behaviour of the individual. 72
Social cognitive models based on the social context of cognition, analyses the factors
that predict behaviour and assess why people refuse to maintain a particular behaviour
to which they had initial commitment. 73 It is based on the conviction that principles and
methods of information processing are important to explain complex social
behaviours. 74 Social cognition theory was developed by Albert Bandura (1977, 1986)
and predicted that behaviour is governed by expectancies, incentives and social
cognitions. 75 Expectancies can be divided into three groups namely; situation outcome
expectancies, outcome expectancies and self-efficacy. Incentives refer to the
individual’s perceived importance of an outcome of a behaviour and social cognition is
where an individual represent the social world. 76 Many models and theories have been
67 Ibid
68 Ogden, Jane, 2007, pp. 23-24
69 Ibid
70 Schwarzer, Ralf, 1992, p. 229
71 Ibid
72 . Ogden, Jane, 2007, pp. 26-29
73 Ibid
74 Pratkanis, Anthony; Breckler, Steven and Greenwald, Anthony, 1989, p.30-31
75 Ogden, Jane, 2007, pp. 26-29
76 Ibid
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