Determinants of beliefs about illness: a study of parents of children with diabetes, asthma, epilepsy, and no chronic illness.

Social psychological models of health care behaviour frequently take as their starting point perception of the illness. This paper seeks to examine factors that may influence these perceptions. Beliefs about the seriousness of eleven childhood illnesses are compared in four groups of parents. Significant differences were evident between the groups of parents depending upon their experiences with illness. For three conditions (diabetes, asthma and epilepsy) the lowest rating of seriousness was made by parents with a child with that condition. For parents of children with diabetes, having a relative with diabetes in good health was associated with a perception of the illness as significantly less serious than those with a relative in average or poor health, or those with no relatives with diabetes. These results are interpreted within an information processing model. Implications of the findings for social psychological models of health care behaviour are discussed.