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Presents a critique of current models of preventive health behavior and discusses a variety of factors, including the appearance of costs and benefits over time, the role of cues to action, the problem of competing life demands, and the ways that actual decision behavior differs from the rational ideal implicit in expectancy-value and utility theories. The framework of a model that is able to accommodate these additional factors is described. This alternative model portrays the precaution adoption process as an orderly sequence of qualitatively different cognitive stages. It emphasizes the development over time of the beliefs and intentions that lead to action.

(C) 1988 by the American Psychological Association