A few years ago, Roger Bibace, Nicholas Aposteleris, and a number of other
collaborators including me began a project to identify the psychological factors which led
patients to adhere to or ignore the advice of their physicians. In the first study we
examined two groups of pregnant women, those expecting a normal pregnancy and those who
were at high risk because they were diabetic. We discovered a family of variables which
did predict adherence (Apostoleris, N.H., Bibace, R., Laird, J.D., Quinn, P., Dowds, B.
& Green, K. (1996) Age and adherence during pregnancy: Issues in measurement.
Presented at the meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association, Philadelphia, April,
1996). and also found a somewhat different set of variables which predicted medical
measures of outcome such as Apgar scores and length of hospitalization for baby and
mother. Intriguingly, the two sets of measures were generally different, and the adherence
did not predict birth outcome. (Apostoleris, N.H., Bibace, R., Laird, J.D., Quinn, P.,
Dowds, B. & Green, K. (1996) Psychosocial factors related to healthful behaviors durin
pregnancy. Presented at the meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association,
Philadelphia, April, 1996.) We are presently following up both of these sets of
findings. (The second study has been submitted. Draft papers of both are
available on request.)