Hope and cardiovascular health-promoting behaviour: Education alone is not enough

Abstract

We investigated hope’s ability to predict cardiovascular disease (CVD) knowledge and health-promoting behaviours. Snyder defined hope as the combination of goal-directed planning and motivation, and theorised that high-hope people seek knowledge relevant to goal pursuits. We surveyed 391 Latino and Asian participants undergoing CVD risk screening, nearly all immigrants to the USA. This was a particularly important sample because, in general, these populations are considered underserved and under-researched. Pre-screening hope levels were measured. After screening and education, participants rated perceived importance of behaviour change. Behaviour change (salt/fat intake, exercise, CVD information-seeking and visiting a physician) and CVD knowledge were assessed one month later by telephone. Unexpectedly, hope did not predict knowledge. However, hope predicted self-reported behaviour change, though results differed by ethnicity. Among Asian individuals, hope × knowledge predicted reduced salt/fat, CVD information-seeking and physician visits. Among Latino individuals, hope × perceived importance of diet change predicted reduced salt/fat and hope × perceived importance of exercise change predicted increased exercise.

Keywords:

• Hope Theory
• cardiovascular disease
• risk factors
• health education
• health-promoting behaviour

Notes

1. Attendance of education booths was used as a measure of the degree of education accessed by participants. It can also be viewed as an indication of information seeking. One possibility is that this information-seeking behaviour was influenced by participants’ screening results such as cholesterol levels, blood pressure or body mass index. To examine this possible relationship, a series of Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated between number of education booths attended and each of these physiological measures (treated continuously and dichotomously according to whether participants fell below or above established cutoffs). None of these analyses yielded statistically significant results.