Centre for Applied Behavioral Economics, Department of Economic and Administrative Sciences, University of Bucharest, 030018 Bucharest, Romania.
Department of Internal Medicine, Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 050474 Bucharest, Romania.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Jan 14;18(2):689. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18020689.
We use the Knowledge, Perceptions and Practices framework to analyze determinants of three types of self-medication practices in Romania: (1) self-medication in the case of cold/flu/viral infections; (2) taking non-prescribed medicine in general; and (3) self-medication based on recommendations by others. We analyzed 706 responses to an online survey and used a factor-based Partial Least Squares algorithm (PLSF) to estimate the relationships between each type of self-medication and possible predictors. Our results show that self-medication is strongly predicted by non-cognitive behavioral factors such as habits and similarity of symptoms, while cognitive determinants such as knowledge and understanding of potential risks are not significantly associated with self-medication behaviors. This paper identifies nonlinear relationships among self-medication practices and its predictors and discusses how our results can help policymakers calibrate interventions with better accuracy.
我们使用知识、观念和实践框架来分析罗马尼亚三种自我药疗行为的决定因素：（1）感冒/流感/病毒感染时的自我药疗；（2）一般情况下的非处方用药；（3）根据他人建议的自我药疗。我们分析了 706 份在线调查的回复，并使用基于因子的偏最小二乘算法（PLSF）来估计每种自我药疗类型与可能的预测因素之间的关系。研究结果表明，自我药疗主要受非认知行为因素（如习惯和症状相似性）的影响，而认知因素（如对潜在风险的了解和认识）与自我药疗行为没有显著关联。本文还确定了自我药疗实践及其预测因素之间的非线性关系，并讨论了我们的研究结果如何帮助政策制定者更准确地调整干预措施。
