Adolescent Risk Perceptions of Health Risk vs Health Promotion Behaviors
Open Access
- Author:
- Pena, Olivia
- Area of Honors:
- Biobehavioral Health
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Nina Lauharatanahirun, Thesis Supervisor
Lori Anne Francis, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- adolescent
risk-taking
risk perceptions
health promotion
health risk
belief updating
adolescent health - Abstract:
- Adolescence is characterized by an increase in risky behaviors which threaten the health of adolescents and society. Decades of public health interventions have aimed to change how adolescents perceive risk in order to reduce risk-taking behaviors. Research has mainly focused on behaviors that harm the health of adolescents, however some risk-taking can serve to promote the health of adolescents, such as playing sports. The purpose of this thesis was to investigate how adolescents perceive different types of health risk behaviors, how they update those perceptions when given new information, and how risk perceptions are correlated with risky behavior in an experimental paradigm called the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART; Lejuez et al., 2002). Adolescents (N=112) completed a likelihood estimation task in which they rated their estimates of experiencing both negative and positive outcomes of health risk and health promotion behaviors. They were given the opportunity to update their estimate after being told information about the actual likelihood of these risks. Adolescents also completed a risky decision-making task (BART) known to be associated with engagement in health risk behaviors (Lejuez et al., 2002). Results indicated that adolescents overestimated the likelihood of negative outcomes of health risk behaviors and underestimated the likelihood of positive outcomes of health risk behaviors, suggesting a healthy bias. They underestimated both outcomes for health promotion behaviors. Adolescents updated their risk perceptions after receiving new information, despite their initial biases. Health risk, but not health promotion risk perceptions were correlated with risk-taking in BART. The results shed light on the types of health perceptions that may contribute to adolescent risk-taking, and that adolescents are able to adjust their beliefs when presented with new information, which has implications for future health interventions.