Despite current concerns over fetal alcohol effects and societal efforts to reduce prenatal alcohol consumption, virtually no research has examined how psychological factors contribute to alcohol use during pregnancy. The current study will examine how health beliefs in combination with other psychosocial factors influence prenatal alcohol use. The research will include 200 pregnant women drawn from two sources: women attending prenatal clinics, and pregnant women from the general population recruited through newspaper advertisements. In a confidential interview, women will be asked about their current and previous alcohol use, previous pregnancy experiences, prenatal educational experiences, beliefs about the impact of prenatal alcohol use, perceived costs and benefits of reducing use, social norms, locus of control, selfefficacy regarding reducing use, and negative feelings toward pregnancy. The research has three specific aims. First, do previous experiences with alcohol, pregnancy and prenatal education determine beliefs regarding the impact of prenatal alcohol use on pregnancy outcomes? Second, can the Health Belief Model be used to explain the use of alcohol during pregnancy? Third, what additional moderating variables determine the relationship between beliefs and actual alcohol use? Moderating variables that will be examined are perceived costs and benefits of reducing alcohol use, social norms, self-efficacy, locus of control and negative feelings toward pregnancy. As part of this research, measures of health beliefs related to prenatal alcohol use, social norms, self-efficacy, and negative feelings will be developed and preliminary work to refine these measures will be conducted. Beliefs along with these additional psychological variables are expected to predict prenatal alcohol use. Further, drinking history, pregnancy experiences, and prenatal educational experiences are expected to contribute to beliefs. This study will demonstrate the efficacy of using a psychological model to explain prenatal alcohol use. Future research will focus on refining measures created for this investigation and on expanding the research to include different populations and different risk-taking behaviors, for example, smoking and use of other drugs. Future research will also be applied towards prevention; for example, through the development of educational strategies based on the health belief variables examined in this study.
| Testa, M; Reifman, A (1996) Individual differences in perceived riskiness of drinking in pregnancy: antecedents and consequences. J Stud Alcohol 57:360-7 |
