 Three lay mental models of disease inheritanceBethan J. Henderson and Bryan T. Maguire Social Science & Medicine, 2000, vol. 50, issue 2, 293-301 Abstract: Genetics are coming to play an increasing role in biomedical understanding of common diseases. The implication of such findings is that at-risk individuals may be offered predictive genetic tests. How do individuals make decisions about predictive tests and what information do they need to make informed choices? Richards [Richards, M.P.M., 1993. The new genetics: some issues for social scientists. Sociology of Health and Illness 15, 567-586] has argued the first step in understanding and helping people to make these decisions is to investigate lay beliefs of genetics. This study examined mental models of inheritance in a sample of 72 lay people. Through analysis of open-ended questionnaires we found three mental models which loosely corresponded to three phases of historical development in the science of genetics. These we labelled the Constitutional, Mendelian and Molecular Models. Predictions for individuals holding each model are made for the comprehension of genetic information in a testing situation. Keywords: Medical; genetics; Genetic; counselling; Genetic; testing; Inheritance; Mental; models; Lay; theories (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:50:y:2000:i:2:p:293-301 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
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