File:Effective health behaviour.jpg

English: Decomposition of health behaviour

Several health behaviour models consider health behaviour to depend from various psychological determinants like problem awareness, decisional balance, self-efficacy expectations, subjective norm that contribute to the intention. If there is an intention to perform the behaviour, behavioural plans and the degree of their specificity contribute to bridging the intention-behaviour gap.

In many cases, the health advantages of a health behaviour depend on more than merely showing the behaviour. The quality of the behavioural performance is important, too. In these cases it might be useful to decompose the behaviour into several elements, i.e. showing the behaviour itself (left column of the picture), the training of the skills necessary to perform the behaviour effectively (middle column) and its skilful performance (right column). The psychological factors contributing to these behavioural elements are nominally the same. However, they refer to distinct behavioural elements. This should be taken into account in research and practice.