Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, USA.
Psychol Health. 2011 May;26 Suppl 1(0 1):41-62. doi: 10.1080/08870441003681299.
Although the attributions individuals make about what causes their physical symptoms are known to influence their care seeking and self-care behaviours, much less is known about the strategies they use to arrive at these attributions. The strategies employed to understand the causes of their symptoms were investigated using in-depth interviews with 100 late middle-age and older adults with HIV/AIDS in New York City. The data revealed that most participants actively sought to explain their symptoms. The explanatory strategies identified included: relying upon illness or medication representations, lay beliefs about the body and ageing, invoking pre-existing vulnerabilities, engaging in lay experimentation, social comparison processes, considering temporal ordering and consulting authoritative sources. While most of them offered a single cause for their symptoms, some offered more complex multi-causal explanations. These findings provide understanding into the reasons why some older adults with HIV/AIDS misattribute symptoms resulting in delay in care or care over-utilisation, suggesting the need for patient education.
尽管人们对导致身体症状的原因的归因被认为会影响他们的就医和自我护理行为，但对于他们用来得出这些归因的策略却知之甚少。本研究使用深入访谈的方法，对纽约市 100 名中老年艾滋病毒/艾滋病患者进行了研究，以调查他们用来理解症状原因的策略。研究结果显示，大多数参与者积极寻求解释自己的症状。确定的解释策略包括：依靠疾病或药物的代表、关于身体和衰老的常识、提出预先存在的脆弱性、进行常识性实验、社会比较过程、考虑时间顺序和咨询权威来源。虽然他们大多数人只提供了一个单一的原因来解释他们的症状，但有些人提供了更复杂的多因果解释。这些发现为理解为什么一些老年艾滋病毒/艾滋病患者错误地归因于症状，导致延迟就医或过度就医提供了依据，这表明需要对患者进行教育。
