ROLE OF GENDER DIFFERENCES IN SELF EFFICACY AND HEALTH BELIEFS OF HEART PATIENTS

Abstract

The present study was conducted to examine gender differences in self efficacy and health beliefs of cardiac patients. A purposive sample of 100 heart patients with an equal number of men and women was collected from a famous cardiac hospital of Lahore. General self-efficacy (Schwarzer & Jerusalem (1995) and Representations of Health Scale (Shahed, 2011) were the tools for data collection. The findings of the present study showed that health beliefs of men and women heart patients were different from each other reflecting their social and gender roles but there were also some similarities which refer to religious and cultural impact. There was no difference in patients in terms of self efficacy. The study has its significance in terms of the health beliefs the patient population have.