The health belief model and preventive health behaviour in Singapore

Every theoretical model in the social sciences confronts a common challenge: to maintain its explanatory power in different cultural contexts. This is, of course, only one of many challenges faced in theory building. But, this discussion shall focus only on the possibility of a cultural bias. More specifically, the aim of this paper is to discuss some of the findings from a test of the Health Belief Model (HBM) in a multi-ethnic society, Singapore. The HBM is a theoretical framework frequently used in the analysis of health-related behaviour. The discussion will be divided into four sections. The first section will present briefly the components of the HBM. The second section will summarize the procedure used to conduct the empirical test of the HBM. And the third and final sections shall deal with the comparison of preventive health behaviour among three ethnic subpopulations in Singapore, highlighting the main findings of the test of the HBM.