Predisposition to self-health care: who does what for themselves and why?

Data collected on a national sample of 714 respondents aged 55 years and over were used to investigate predisposition to self-health care. Three different indicators of self-health care were employed in this work, including a measure of actual self-care behavior (ASCB), a behavioral indicator, and two attitudinal indicators, normative self-care response (NSCR) and global self-care. In OLS regression modeling, predisposing characteristics from the health-behavior model yielded levels of variance consistent with those found in the extant literature on health- and social-services utilization among elderly Americans. Age showed limited utility as an explanatory variable; it appeared as a direct effect only on global self-care. Race was the only variable to achieve a statistically significant effect on NSCR, and being female showed direct effects on ASCB and global self-care.