Children's perceptions of vulnerability to illness and accidents. A replication, extension, and refinement

THREE PREMISES underlie a continuing investigation of children's perceptions of vulner. ability to illness and accidents. First, whether a person engages in some preventive or adaptive health behavior is related to whether he perceives himself as vulnerable to some illness or accident (1). Second, "organizational patterns" have important implications for the prediction and understanding of behavior (2,5). Third, behavioral growth and the developmental link between the adult and child is continuous. The research also has practical value. Authorities of the World Health Organization have suggested that systematic research is needed to determine the effectiveness of educational programs and the relationship of health behavior to a person's beliefs and attitudes (6). Moreover, if health educators knew more about the "organization" of various health beliefs at different -ages, for example, the expectancies of encountering health problems, they might plan programs with optimally effective content and timing. To the extent that a high degree of organizational patterning exists within the expectancies or beliefs of some target population, health educators might find it more effective to attempt to modify a person's entire set of expectancies rather than to try to change individual ones. These considerations converge on the focal point of the study-the consistency in children's expectancies of encountering illnesses and accidents. Consistency refers to the manner in which the degree of expectancy of some specific health problem is related to the degree of expectancy of other such problems. In my exploratory study (7), I noted the existence of two major areas of consistency. Significant relationships were observed (a) among the expectancies of the individual child and (b) among patterns of expectancies across groups of children. More concretely, the degree to which a child expects a certain illness or accident to occur is related to the degree to which he expects other such events to occur; the degree to which a certain illness or accident is expected by one age-sex group is related to the degree to which it is expected by other agesex groups. During June and July of 1968 I attempted to repeat, extend, and refine the original study. Replication would counter criticisms that the results Dr. Gochman is a research associate with the department of community health services, University of Michigan School of Public Health. The study described was supported by research grant No. CH00044 from the Division of Community Health Services, Public Health Service. Tearsheet requests to Dr. David S. Gochman, Public Health Practice Research Program, 122 South First Street, Ann Arbor, Mich. 48108.