An analysis of health related behavior using interpretive structural modeling

: In order for people to know about and to adopt and maintain healthy living practices, 1) a theoretical overview regarding factors associated with health behavior, and 2) an understanding of the actual pattern of behavior in given situations are needed. While theoretical models are helpful in providing a perspective, these models are not practical enough for understanding actual patterns of behavior. In the present study, the ISM (Interpretive Structural Modeling) method was utilized to understand the actual pattern of health related behaviors. The ISM method is used in systems engineering for structurally modeling complex systems. In this study, the ISM method was applied to grasp the structure of coping behavior in the case of fever caused by a common cold under the following two conditions; i) a simplified situation using eight elementary behaviors, and ii) a more complicated situation using more than eight elementary behaviors. i) Subjects were 30 students of public health nursing. The sequence of eight elementary behaviors was determined by paired comparisons using the ISM matrix. The microcomputer made a network diagram of elementary behaviors. The 30 diagrams, none of which were the same, were classified into three types: 1) simple linear (7 subjects), 2) one junction (12 subjects), 3) two or more junctions (11 subjects). After the experiment, subjects were instructed to evaluate the validity of the ISM method. More than 80 percent of the subjects rated the ISM method as effective in increasing their cognition of the hierarchical structure of health related behaviors. ii) Two subjects (A and B) were instructed to come up with as many possible coping behaviors as they could imagine.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)