Drug-taking compliance: a review and synthesis.

Patient compliance in taking prescribed drugs is still not well understood despite numerous studies. The state of knowledge through 1976 is reviewed, with some methodological criticisms of compliance studies, and patient, provider, disease, and drug factors associated with compliance are analyzed. Until recently the lack of a well-developed theory or model of compliance behavior was a major problem. Some compliance models based on the health belief model are discussed, and an alternative adaptation of the latter is developed.