Child care centers are a unique context for studying communication about the social and personal expectations about health behaviors. The theory of normative social behavior (TNSB; Rimal & Real, 2005 ) provides a framework for testing the role of social and psychological influences on handwashing behaviors among child care workers. A cross-sectional survey of child care workers in 21 centers in...

Introduction: Nowadays, use of virtual socail networks is increasing . However, few studies have been conducted  about  factors influencing the use of social networks by using theories of health education  among students.  The present study was to determine predictive factors of virtual social networks among students of Yazd university of medical sciences based on the constr...

Social capital is a concept that can facilitate a friendly merger between sociological and economic theories of political behavior. Rational-choice theories emphasize resources and constraints, and political-cultural theories focus on normative rules and habitual behavior; social capital integrates both. Mutual obligations instituted among members of society function as “credit slips” which are...

In recent years researchers have focused attention on understanding the role of normative factors in influencing behaviors. Although there is some evidence to support the idea that restructuring normative beliefs can result in behavior change, the norms literature is largely silent about how or why this influence occurs. The theory of normative social behavior describes the moderators of the de...

BackgroundAlthough exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) is highly emphasized by the experts, nulliparous women do not adhere to this behavior at a desirable level. Since it seems that mothers’ beliefs and values play an important role in their adherence to these behaviors, the present study, aimed to perform a careful analysis of the behavior and evaluation of factors associated with the EBF in nullip...

Data from 1002 households indicated that contextual factors (group size, subsequent activity) and individual difference factors (sex, extroversion, drinking frequency) differentially influenced consumption and normative ratings. These findings suggest that contextual cues serve as determinants of drinking norms and that drinking behavior reflects individual variation in sensitivity to these cues.

Local governments are creating 311 public service request lines across the US, and the publicly-available data from these lines is continuously-measured, geographically finegrained, and a non-self-reported measure of citizens’ behavior. As such, it seems a promising measure of neighborhood civic engagement. However, this data is both empirically and theoretically different from many common citi...