Methodological Issues in the Study of Psychosocial Influences on Disease
from Part V - Intervention Approaches
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2020
Health psychology and behavioral medicine are founded on the biopsychosocial model, in which health and disease reflect reciprocal influences among biological, psychosocial, and sociocultural processes. As a result, research methods in these fields draw on concepts and methods from several disciplines and often require their integration. Health psychology and behavioral medicine include three major topics: health behavior and risk reduction; psychosocial aspects of medical illness and medical care; and psychosocial and psychobiological influences on disease. This chapter emphasizes methodological challenges in the third topic, although the issues discussed are broadly relevant to the others. Conceptualization and measurement of health endpoints presents evolving challenges in which measured outcomes must capture specific and well-defined aspects of health and disease. In the identification of psychosocial predictors of health outcomes, psychosocial epidemiology research must address a variety of challenges, including the conceptualization, measurement, and analysis of overlapping risk factors. In research on the psychobiological mechanisms linking risk and resilience factors with health outcomes, theory-driven research should consider a broad range of interrelated physiological processes and multiple sources of pathogenic physiological activation. Across the various research topics, clear ties to conceptual models, consideration of developmental issues across the lifespan, the need to examine both between- and within-person associations in many research questions, and the importance of health disparities and related aspects of ethnic and cultural diversity are important in measurement, design, and analysis of biopsychosocial research.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.