Explaining health and illness: Lay beliefs on the nature of health

Abstract

Nearly 350 people from a wide variety of backgrounds completed two fairly lengthy questionnaires derived from Stainton Rogers (1991) on lay beliefs about health and illness. They were also asked to provide a number of demographic details (sex, age, education, voting patterns) and their experience of alternative medicine. Both questionnaires had a fairly clear and interpretable factor structure which reflected the explanatory diversity recorded in the literature. A series of regressional analyses were performed which regressed the demographic and related data onto each of the factor scores. These showed the power of “experiences of alternative medicine”, age, religion and political beliefs on the beliefs about health and illness. These results are discussed in terms of the growing literature in the field.