Locus of Control in Health: the Effects of Psychological Well-Being and Contact With the Doctor

Joanna Murray and Roslyn Corney
Additional contact information
Joanna Murray: General Practice Research Unit, Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, Denmark Hill, London SE5 8AF
Roslyn Corney: General Practice Research Unit, Institute of Psychiatry

International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 1989, vol. 35, issue 4, 361-369

Abstract: Previous studies have demonstrated an association between a high score on measures of "external" locus of control of health and high levels of psychosocial distress. In the present study, a measure of illness behaviour (visits to the doctor) has been added to elucidate the association between locus of control and self-reported psychological distress. In a sample of female high and low attenders at two general practices, neither physical health nor psycho-social problems were found to be associated with high scores on the measure of external locus of control. However, high attenders were more likely to score high on this measure. When a logistic model was fitted to the data an interactive variable (attendance rate x psychological symptoms) was found to have a significant effect, suggesting that psychological distress has a different effect upon the beliefs expressed by high and low attenders.

Date: 1989
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/002076408903500409 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:socpsy:v:35:y:1989:i:4:p:361-369

DOI: 10.1177/002076408903500409

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Social Psychiatry
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().