Children's primary health care services: social-cognitive factors related to utilization.
OBJECTIVE
To test social-cognitive influences on parent decision-making processes related to children's health care use.


METHODS
Eighty-seven primary caretakers of children ages 4 to 9 years completed measures of child health and behavior, parent functioning, and social-cognitive factors related to parenting and health care use. Primary care use was obtained from the children's primary care physician(s) for the 2 years prior to recruitment.


RESULTS
Social-cognitive variables accounted for 13.2% of the variance in primary health care use, above and beyond the influence of child health status and psychosocial variables. The best predictive model, accounting for 29.8% of the variance in primary care use, included the interaction between parental stress and self-efficacy to cope with parenting demands, child behavior problems, self-efficacy for accessing physician assistance, medication use, and parent health care use.


CONCLUSIONS
Results documented the relationship between self-efficacy and parent stress in decision making about pediatric primary care use. Social-cognitive theory provides a new perspective for evaluating factors that influence health care use.
Janicke
David M
DM
Department of Clinical and Health Psychology, University of Florida, Florida, USA.
Finney
Jack W
JW
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D002648:Child; D002662:Child Health Services / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003071:Cognition; D003657:Decision Making; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology*; D010342:Patient Acceptance of Health Care / Q000523:psychology*; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012044:Regression Analysis; D020377:Self Efficacy; D013315:Stress, Psychological; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014481:United States