According to the TPB, intentions are the culmination of a combination of three antecedents: (i) attitudes (i.e., perceived costs and benefits); (ii) subjective norms (e.g., influence of close friends and relatives); and, (iii) perceived control over behavior (i.e., extent to which behavior is perceived as subject to control by the individual).
Others have argued that studies that measure PCB are actually measuring two distinct constructs: self-efficacy, i.e. an individual's belief in his ability to perform certain behaviors, and perceived control, i.e. the individual's belief a behavior is, in general, controllable by an actor (Armitage & Conner 1999; Terry & O'Leary 1995).
Part 1 consists of five scales: pain severity (PS), pain-related interference in everyday life (I), perceived life control (LC), affective distress (AD), and perceived support from significant others (S).
The other four coping domains, however, were positively associated with perceived control, i.e. can be considered as effective strategies [ 15, 28].
Contrary to what is suggested in the literature [ 16], we did not find a relationship between perceived vulnerability and perceived control, i.e. a too optimistic belief about disease risk was not related to beliefs that one takes more preventive actions or is more careful than the average person.
The appearance control subscale measures perceived control over physical appearance (i.e., "I think I could look as good as I wanted to if I worked at it").
The subsidiary aims were: to explore the impact of the interventions on breast-cancer-specific distress, general psychological distress and appraisal (i.e. perceived risk and perceived control over developing breast cancer); to evaluate the acceptability of the interventions.
This perceived control results from (i) motivated behaviour associated with rewarding situations, (ii) coping mechanisms in stressful situations and (iii) the temperamental ability to switch attention or the propensity to resolve conflicts by selecting to respond only to those stimuli which will lead to reward and inhibit responding to inappropriate or negative stimuli [ 18, 30].
Secondary outcomes include attitudes toward performing sun protective behaviours (i.e., attitudes), perceptions of normative support to sun protect (i.e., subjective norms, group norms, and image norms), and perceived control over performing sun protective behaviours (i.e., perceived behavioural control).
Secondary outcome variables will assess the effectiveness of the intervention as a means of improving students' attitudes toward performing sun protective behaviours (i.e., attitudes), perceptions of normative support to sun protect (i.e., subjective norms, group norms, and image norms), and perceived control over performing sun protective behaviours (i.e., perceived behavioural control) (Table 1).
This 39 year-old participant with a high perceived control score who perceived a low risk for her pregnancy stated: ""I'm healthy, I'm fine and I've prepared myself, I've educated myself... Yeah I think it would be less stressful [if I were younger] because I wouldn't have to educate myself so much.
