Beverly, E., & Wray, L. (2008). The role of collective efficacy in exercise adherence: a qualitative study of spousal support and Type 2 diabetes management. Health Education Research.The abstract is up on PubMed at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18559399
The authors investigated the role of collective efficacy among couples seeking to adhere to an exercise program in managing Type 2 diabetes and arrived at three main themes: collective support, collective motivation, and collective responsibility.
There are a few reasons that I enjoyed this particular project’s take on collective efficacy, though the biggest is probably that it seems to be relatively unique in using collective efficacy to study a group’s ability to achieve some goal that isn’t technically its core reason for existing; a lot of what I’ve read, including some of Bandura’s writing on the subject, talks about collective efficacy in terms of a football team or some other group that exists to mean a stated goal (e.g., winning the game) and then discusses collective efficacy as that teams efficacy in reaching that goal.
To me, the Beverly and Wray article represents an important direction to go with collective efficacy, only because a lot of groups (or at least many members within a particular group) might want to achieve goals that aren’t related to the group’s real reason for existing. Employee-sponsored wellness programs would be one major example I can think of. And collective efficacy probably shouldn’t be considered “just” social support – there is a big difference between having plenty of positive social support (say in a group wellness program) and believing that the group as a whole has the ability to reach its goals – whatever specific health goals those might be.
Measuring collective efficacy is a whole other can of worms, so perhaps that will be a future post… In this case I just wanted to point to the Beverly and Wray article, because it was a pretty unique take on collective efficacy and worth a read.
0 comments:
Post a Comment