Meta-Analysis of the Reasoned Action Approach (RAA) to Understanding Health Behaviors

By R. McEachan, N. Taylor, R. Harrison, Rebecca Lawton, Peter H Gardner, Mark Conner. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 2016

641 citations recorded by the source corpus.

BackgroundReasoned action approach (RAA) includes subcomponents of attitude (experiential/instrumental), perceived norm (injunctive/descriptive), and perceived behavioral control (capacity/autonomy) to predict intention and behavior.PurposeTo provide a meta-analysis of the RAA for health behaviors focusing on comparing the pairs of RAA subcomponents and differences between health protection and health-risk behaviors.MethodsThe present research reports a meta-analysis of correlational tests of RAA subcomponents, examination of moderators, and combined effects of subcomponents on intention and behavior. Regressions were used to predict intention and behavior based on data from studies measuring all variables.ResultsCapacity and experiential attitude had large, and other constructs had small-medium-sized correlations with intention; all constructs except autonomy were significant independent predictors of intention in regressions. Intention, capacity, and experiential attitude had medium-large, and other constructs had small-medium-sized correlations with behavior; intention, capacity, experiential attitude, and descriptive norm were significant independent predictors of behavior in regressions.ConclusionsThe RAA subcomponents have utility in predicting and understanding health behaviors.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Physiology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e55e6ad7785bb91906bcc0e17453f245932636fb

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Citations in the corpus

Knowledge, attitude, and practice regarding COVID-19 among healthcare workers in Henan, China (2020, background): “Knowledge is a prerequisite for establishing prevention beliefs, forming positive attitudes, and promoting positive behaviours, and individuals' cognition and attitudes towards disease affect the effectiveness of their coping strategies and behaviours to a certain extent [4] .”
Moderating effects of pro-environmental self-identity on pro-environmental intentions and behaviour: A multi-behaviour study (2017, positive): “A number of studies have noted the direct effect of attitudes on behaviours independent of intentions (McEachan et al., 2016).”
Socioeconomic status as a moderator between social cognitions and physical activity: Systematic review and meta‐analysis based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (2017, methodology): “Both the TPB and RAA have been widely used to examine physical activity (Hagger & Chatzisarantis, 2009; McEachan, Conner, Taylor, & Lawton, 2011; McEachan et al., 2016), which provides a substantial database of studies that have employed similar means to measure key health cognitions, ideal for revi”