Amsterdam 2015
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| Abstract #3399 - Martin Fishbein Memorial Plenary | ||||
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Session: 1.6: Martin Fishbein Memorial Plenary (Plenary) on Tuesday @ 12.30-14.30 in C103 Chaired by Kees Rietmeijer, Barbara Hedge, Kevin Malotte Authors: Presenting Author: Dr Marco Yzer - University of Minnesota, United States |
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| Additional Authors: | ||||
| Aim: Almost 50 years after its inception, reasoned action theory continues to serve as a foundation for behavior change research and interventions. The significance of the theory for HIV behavior change interventions lies in its ability to identify the beliefs underlying a particular HIV-relevant behavior that an intervention should address to set in motion the processes that lead to change in that behavior. The effectiveness of reasoned action-based interventions for moving people to adoption of preventive behaviors has been well-established. | ||||
| Method / Issue: Biomedical progress has dramatically improved life expectancy for people living with HIV. This implies an important yet relatively underexplored possible shift in perceptions about HIV preventive behaviors. Before antiretroviral therapy HIV preventive behavior could be understood in terms of life or death implications, the possibility of testing positive for HIV and the irreversible consequences of being HIV-positive meant that HIV risk behavior had meaningful short term outcomes. In the era of antiretroviral therapy outcomes of HIV preventive behavior arguably might be perceived as less immediately salient, i.e. the long term absence or management of disease. Such temporal interpretations of HIV-relevant outcomes of preventive behaviors have implications for prevention efforts. For example, reasoned action theory usefully reminds us that different beliefs underlie behaviors relevant for the near and distant future. In a complementary manner, construal level theory (Trope & Lieberman, 2003, 2010) makes predictable what kind of beliefs are important for near or distant future behaviors. | ||||
| Results / Comments: Construal level theory explains that people interpret or “construe” distant future behavior in abstract, decontextualized and goal-relevant terms, reflecting values or the “why aspects” of the behavior. In contrast, near future behavior is construed in concrete, contextualized and goal-irrelevant terms, reflecting feasibility or the “how aspects” of the behavior. Applied to reasoned action theory, this means that attitudinal beliefs (representing “why aspects” of performing a behavior) are relatively more important for distant than for near future behaviors, whereas efficacy beliefs (representing “how aspects” of performing a behavior) are relatively more important for near than for distant future behaviors. Possibly, then, distant future behaviors are most effectively promoted by prevention messages that focus on valued outcomes (e.g., staying HIV-free). Construal level proposes that this is particularly effective if congruent with the distal framing of the behavior, such outcomes similarly are framed as distal. Note, however, that HIV prevention often recommends behaviors that necessarily take place in the near future—e.g., taking Truvada every day starting tomorrow. A reasoned action approach informed by construal level insights would emphasize efficacy beliefs and feasibility issues in this case. | ||||
| Discussion: The challenge before us is to determine whether temporal distance manipulations offer viable prevention options in the reasoned action approach to HIV behavior change interventions. Systematic inquiry into implications of temporal distance issues for predicting the relative importance of behavioral determinants for behaviors that differ in temporal distance will particularly strengthen the effectiveness of reasoned action theory as a tool for HIV prevention. | ||||
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