Examining personal control beliefs as a mediating variable in the health-damaging behavior of substance use: an alternative approach.

Substance use continues to be a concern for researchers and health professionals alike. One of the most extensive areas of research on health-related behaviors such as smoking and drug use has been on personal control beliefs. Since many health actions (both facilitative and deleterious) depend on voluntary behaviors, and many health-related prevention and intervention programs are predicted on an assumption of controllability, this is an important area to consider. This article is a review of some of the literature and presents an alternative approach that entails using area-specific and domain-specific methods to examine the role that control beliefs play in the health-damaging behavior of substance use.