PHE 340 Module 3 Planned Behavior Short Paper Example

What My Wife Says, What the Crew Does: The Theory of Planned Behavior and Belt Use on Ranch Roads

[Student Name]

Southern New Hampshire University

PHE 340: Social and Behavioral Health

Module Three Short Paper

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The organization, setting and figures below are a composite written as a model document. No real employer, client, colleague or patient is described.

What My Wife Says, What the Crew Does: The Theory of Planned Behavior and Belt Use on Ranch Roads

The health belief model showed that Sandhills drivers know crashes are serious and can buckle easily, but feel safe near the home place and resent buckling between gates. It said little about the people around them, although the first module showed that crews, families and neighbors shape what happens in a pickup cab. The theory of planned behavior brings those people into the analysis. This paper explains the theory, applies it to belt use using interviews with twelve local drivers and compares what it reveals with the earlier analysis. The same twelve interviews supply the evidence.

The Theory

Ajzen (1991) treated intention as the nearest cause of a deliberate act, and that intention rests on three supports: how favorably the person judges the action, whether people who matter to them would endorse it, called subjective norms, and how much control the person feels over doing it. A sense of control that matches genuine obstacles can steer the act directly as well as by way of intention. Later work divided norms into injunctive norms, what others approve of, and descriptive norms, what others actually do, a distinction that matters a great deal here.

Attitudes

Attitudes toward belts were mixed rather than negative. Most drivers called belts a good idea in general and a hassle in practice. A 61-year-old rancher said, It's the right thing on the highway; around here it's just in the way. Younger drivers were more positive overall. Attitudes depended on the trip: favorable for long drives, lukewarm for short ranch runs. An intervention aimed at attitudes alone would be fighting a qualified belief rather than an opposed one. Attitudes, in short, are not the obstacle; the situations in which they are tested are.

Injunctive Norms

When asked whose opinion mattered, drivers named spouses, parents, children and, for younger drivers, older ranchers they worked for. Most said these people would approve of wearing a belt. One man said, My wife tells me every time. A 20-year-old said his mother made him promise. Injunctive norms, in other words, favor belts. The people drivers care about want them buckled.

Descriptive Norms

What drivers see others do tells a different story. Nobody interviewed could name a rancher or crew member who buckled on short trips, and several said they would feel odd being the only one. The road crew ride-along showed the same pattern. When the people in the cab never buckle, the descriptive norm says short-trip belts are not normal, and that message is reinforced many times a day. The gap between injunctive norms at home and descriptive norms at work may be the most important finding of this analysis, and it is invisible to the health belief model.

The descriptive norm is also self-reinforcing. Each driver who leaves the belt off makes the next one more likely to do the same, which is how a whole crew can drift away from a behavior every member privately supports. The same mechanism can run the other way: when a few respected people start buckling visibly, the norm can shift faster than attitudes would suggest.

Perceived Behavioral Control

Drivers felt fully in control of buckling on the highway but described much lower control on gate-heavy runs, where they might stop ten times in a few miles, often while hauling tools or with a dog on the seat. One said, I'd have to unbuckle every hundred yards. Their sense of control reflects a real constraint, which Ajzen (1991) noted can affect behavior directly as well as through intention. Practical changes, such as leaving the engine running while a passenger opens gates or buckling on the paved road only, could raise both perceived and actual control.

Intentions and the Gap

Most drivers said they intended to wear a belt more often after recent local crashes, but few described doing so. The theory helps explain the gap. Attitudes are lukewarm on short trips, the descriptive norm points the other way and control feels low when gates are frequent. Intention formed at the kitchen table, under a spouse's injunctive norm, fades in a cab full of unbuckled coworkers on a run with ten gates. Habit, which the theory does not model directly, likely adds to the gap.

Comparing the Two Theories

Both theories point to practical barriers, which the health belief model calls barriers and this theory calls perceived control. The theory of planned behavior adds something the first missed: the conflict between what loved ones want and what coworkers do. Janz and Becker (1984) found that barriers were the strongest single predictor in health belief model studies, and the two analyses agree on that point. Strine et al. (2010) showed that belt use is lowest in the most rural places, and this analysis suggests one reason: in small working communities, what everyone in the truck does carries great weight.

Implications

The analysis suggests three targets. First, make the descriptive norm visible and favorable, for example by recruiting respected ranchers and crew leaders to buckle on every trip and to talk about it. Second, bring the injunctive norm from home into the cab, perhaps through children's messages or family pledges displayed in trucks. Third, raise perceived control on gate-heavy runs through practical routines. Attitudes need less work, because they are already favorable in general.

These targets also suggest who should deliver the intervention. The health department's name carries little weight in a pickup cab; a crew foreman, a rodeo announcer or a rancher whose neighbor died in a rollover carries a great deal. Choosing messengers who already shape the descriptive norm is itself an application of the theory.

Conclusion

The theory of planned behavior shows that Sandhills drivers are surrounded by people who want them to buckle and people who show them not to. Closing that gap, and making buckling practical on short runs, is more promising than trying to change attitudes that are already broadly positive. The next discussion turns to readiness and stages.

References

Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50(2), 179-211. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(91)90020-T

Janz, N. K., & Becker, M. H. (1984). The health belief model: A decade later. Health Education Quarterly, 11(1), 1-47. https://doi.org/10.1177/109019818401100101

Strine, T. W., Beck, L. F., Bolen, J., Okoro, C., Dhingra, S., & Balluz, L. (2010). Geographic and sociodemographic variation in self-reported seat belt use in the United States. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 42(4), 1066-1071. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2009.12.014