Examining the influence of existing social roles on sick role acceptance among African American women with hypertension.

摘要

This study explored social factors involved in African American women's acceptance of the "sick role" defined as a medical diagnosis of hypertension. The primary purpose of this study was to examine the relationship that an African American woman's existing social roles play in sick role acceptance behaviors, utilizing a role theory and stress and coping theoretical framework. The researcher hypothesized that failure to accept the sick role would be demonstrated by non-adherence to medical recommendations for treatment of hypertension. Conversely, evidence of sick role acceptance would be demonstrated by adherence to a combination of recommended lifestyle modification and prescribed medication. Secondary data analysis was performed with variables extracted from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) years 2011 and 2012 (CDC, 2013). The study included a sample of 1476 African American women over the age of 20 years who had been told by a doctor that they have hypertension. Logistic regression analysis was performed for this dissertation analysis as there are several dichotomous outcome variables (medication, salt intake and exercise) as well as multiple categorical independent variables (marital status, parental status and employment status). The findings of this study indicate that we cannot confidently conclude that there is a direct or indirect relationship between social roles and sick role acceptance based on the analysis of the NHANES data and were at best only able to estimate the relationships due to limited variance in the data. This research was tasked with examining the influence of social roles on medical non-adherence in a sample that was nearly fully compliant with medical recommendations for hypertension.