Health locus of control and health behaviour: An investigation into the role of health value and behaviour-specific efficacy beliefs

This paper reports a study which examines two important issues in research with the health locus of control construct: first, the need to include measures of health value and second, the need to measure behaviour-specific efficacy beliefs. One-hundred and seven adults completed questionnaires measuring internal health locus of control beliefs, behaviour-specific efficacy beliefs, health value and the performance of a range of health-related behaviours (i.e. smoking, alcohol, exercise, diet, weight). The results firstly showed that only behaviour-specific efficacy beliefs correlated with performance of the health behaviours. Secondly, when the correlations were rerun for high and low health value individuals, significant correlations between behaviour-specific efficacy beliefs and performance of the health behaviours were found for high health value individuals, but not for low health value individuals. With only one exception, the correlations for internal health locus of control beliefs were non-significant. The results are discussed in relation to current critiques of the health locus of control construct.