Health locus of control and health behaviour: Results from a nationally representative survey

Abstract

The present study aims to examine the association between sociodemographic variables and health locus of control (HLC) as well as HLC and health behaviour. Data from a representative sample of the German adult population, the Telephone Health Survey 2006 (GSTel06; N = 5542), were used. A German version of the MHLC (multidimensional HLC) scales was used. Associations between sociodemographic variables and three dimensions of HLC (internal, powerful others and chance) and between HLC and health behaviour were calculated. In particular, higher age, low socioeconomic status and migration background were associated with higher HLC scores on the powerful others and chance dimension. Subjects scoring high on the chance dimension did less sports activity (OR: 0.8; CI: 0.7–0.9), had less medical teeth protection (0.7; 0.6–0.9), fewer health courses (0.8; 0.7–0.9) and conducted less systematic information-seeking (0.8; 0.6–0.9), while results regarding internal and powerful others HLC remained mainly insignificant. High chance HLC can be regarded as risk factor of adequate health behaviour. The associations between high chance HLC, low socioeconomic status and migration background emphasise the need for treatments and prevention programmes tailored to modify the high chance HLC of socially disadvantaged populations.

Keywords:

• health locus of control
• health behaviour
• epidemiology
• risk factors
• socioeconomic status
• migrants

Acknowledgements

The Telephone Health Survey 2006 was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Health (No. 1502-63202). There are no conflicts of interest in the conducting and reporting of the study.