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The Israeli society and “Macabbi” should benefit from the proposed research to the extent that pregnant women will be tested according to the current existing guidelines.
The study will use a holistic, multi-disciplinary model that includes personality, motivational, and attitudinal constructs to predict women’s motivation for, intentions to perform, and decision to use or refrain from using tests to identify their and their babies’ problems during pregnancy.
The study provides hypotheses about the relationships between health attitudes (perceived health, positive health attitudes, health knowledge, and health consciousness), personality traits (anxiety, risk perceptions, and locus of control), and external influences (relationship with and readiness to listen to the physician, relationship with readiness to listen to, and influence attempts of the spouse, the impact of the social network and the extent to which it attempts to influence testing, and exposure to media-based information and readiness to accept it) and motivation to be tested.
The population includes “Macabbi”-insured pregnant women (21+) in a geographically and demographically representative cross-section, who will be asked about their intentions to and actual use of tests during pregnancy. We shall include qualitative, in-depth interviews and consider comparable tests for sub-populations.
The study’s importance is in it making it possible to identify and characterize pregnant women who intend or actually use tests beyond recommendations. This fits “Macabbi”’s goal to advance normatively-based medicine and do it efficiently by cutting down on the number of unnecessary tests. Additionally, the study will make it possible to identify and characterize women who intended or actually used tests less than recommended. This fits “Macabbi”’s goal to advance preventive medicine by matching the number of tests carried out with the normatively-based number.
The study could have positive implications beyond pregnancy tests. For example, if an anxious personality contributes to insufficient testing, treating it could have positive mental outcomes unrelated to pregnancy testing. Similarly, if the relationship with one’s physician contributes to conducting the “right” number of tests, improving it could enhance it for future physician-patient interactions. Likewise, if risk-loving/aversion affects pregnancy testing, treating risk attitudes could contribute to the probability of other preventive tests for females in the future.
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