Values and preventive health behavior: Assessment using the Rokeach Value Survey, response time, and certainty ratings

The relation between the value college students place on health and their self-reported preventive health behavior was examined within the context of Rokeach\u27s (1973) value system. Two broad categories of values having opposite relations with preventive health behavior were identified. Of particular interest was whether decision times and degrees of certainty regarding the importance of health, relative to other values, would facilitate the prediction of preventive health behavior scores. Knowledge of ordinal distance from health enhanced prediction, but only for certain values. Composite scores incorporating response times and certainty ratings with ordinal distance from health, however, did not improve predictions of preventive health behavior. Large amounts of variability in response times and a ceiling effect in certainty ratings may have reduced their validity