Vassallo Jeremy S, Shearson Kim M, Sharples Jenny M
Institute for Health and Sport, Victoria University, Footscray Park, Ballarat Rd, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
BMC Psychol. 2025 Apr 9;13(1):355. doi: 10.1186/s40359-025-02658-4.
Men's lower life expectancy has been in part attributed to adherence to masculine stereotypes restricting health promoting behaviors. Health-specific self-efficacy beliefs are theorised to contribute to these outcomes and recent research suggests addressing the link between masculinity and these beliefs is a key pathway to men's health promotion. Gender-sensitised health interventions show promise for helping men overcome health barriers as the "safe space" provides opportunity to broaden perspectives of masculinity, contributing to increases in health self-efficacy, which then mediates improved health outcomes. This study aimed to address gaps in previous research by examining this mechanism of gender-sensitised health promotion longitudinally in an intervention context.
A sample of 295 men participating in the Sons of the West (SOTW) 2019 program, a 10-week gender-sensitised, community-based health program, were measured pre-program and post-program to longitudinally assess changes in health outcomes. Regression analyses were used to test a mediation model of health behavior change.
Findings showed improvements in health behavior, health self-efficacy, psychological distress, and decreased conformity to masculine norms. Residualized scores of the changes from pre-intervention to post-intervention indicated the changes in health self-efficacy fully mediated the relationship between changes in conformity to masculine norms and changes in health behavior and psychological distress.
Results suggest the key mechanism of change was the provision of opportunities for men to negotiate masculine stereotypes thus increasing health self-efficacy and explaining health improvements. This study utilized data from a real-world, large-scale men's health program but was limited to two waves of data. Future research and implications are discussed.
男性较低的预期寿命部分归因于对男性刻板印象的坚持，这种刻板印象限制了促进健康的行为。特定健康自我效能信念被认为有助于产生这些结果，最近的研究表明，解决男性气质与这些信念之间的联系是促进男性健康的关键途径。性别敏感的健康干预措施有望帮助男性克服健康障碍，因为“安全空间”提供了拓宽男性气质观念的机会，有助于提高健康自我效能，进而介导健康状况的改善。本研究旨在通过在干预背景下纵向研究这种性别敏感的健康促进机制，填补以往研究的空白。
对295名参与2019年“西部之子”（SOTW）项目的男性进行抽样，该项目是一个为期10周的基于社区的性别敏感健康项目，在项目前和项目后进行测量，以纵向评估健康结果的变化。回归分析用于检验健康行为改变的中介模型。
研究结果显示健康行为、健康自我效能、心理困扰有所改善，对男性规范的遵从性降低。干预前到干预后的变化的残差分数表明，健康自我效能的变化完全介导了对男性规范的遵从性变化与健康行为和心理困扰变化之间的关系。
结果表明，关键的变化机制是为男性提供机会来协商男性刻板印象，从而提高健康自我效能并解释健康状况的改善。本研究利用了来自一个现实世界的大规模男性健康项目的数据，但仅限于两波数据。讨论了未来的研究及意义。
