Appraisal of Desire for Control over Healthcare: Structure, Stability, and Relation to Health Locus of Control and to the ‘Big Five’ Personality Traits

Abstract

This study addressed the question of whether the traditional tripartite distinction between cognitive, decisional and behavioral control is meaningful as applied to desire for healthcare control. Subscales of the Krantz Health Opinion Survey and the Autonomy Preference Index were administered to 680 undergraduates along with the Multidimensional Health Locus of Control Scales and the NEO-FFI Five-Factor Inventory. These measures were readministered to 523 of these subjects approximately seven weeks later. Confirmatory factor analysis of the data indicated that desire for healthcare control is best conceptualized as having three separate components. Desire for information was clearly unrelated to either desire for behavioral or decisional control; however the latter two forms of control, which are indicative of more active engagement by the individual, overlapped to a moderate degree. The three-factor model was stable over time and the component factors (particularly desire for decisional and behavioral control) were also stable. No strong relationships were found between the component factors and measures of health locus of control or the basic personality trait dimensions measured by the NEO, suggesting that the factors represent largely situation-specific traits. Findings were discussed in terms of how they may have been influenced by variability in the instruments that were used to measure the separate desire for healthcare control components, and in terms of the need for criterion-related validational work especially in the crucial area of decisional control.