Different patterns for different conditions The influence of personal characteristics on attitudes towards medicine use

Abstract

Purpose - Using data from the European Social Survey, the purpose of this paper is to examine the individual-level determinants of the attitudes toward the use of medicines to treat common conditions such as hair loss and weight gain. Design/methodology/approach - The authors estimate ordered logit models in which the five conditions inquired about in the survey are the dependent variables. Findings - The variation in the average approval scores for medicine use implies differing degrees of medicalization for the five conditions inquired about in the survey, and the associations observed in the multivariate analysis reveal that part of the subjectivity in attitudes can be attributed to basic personal characteristics, namely age, gender, and education. Self-evaluations of general health, happiness, religiosity, and political ideology are also found to influence people's attitudes in predictable ways. Research limitations/implications - The examinations point to the shortcomings of the available data sets in sorting out the roles of different factors - such as the presence of effective treatments without side effects - in reaching the observed attitudes for medicine use. Social implications - The empirical findings suggest that the overuse of medicines can become a more serious problem in the near future in aging European societies. Originality/value - The authors demonstrate that higher approval scores among younger and more educated people on the whole and among women with respect to hair loss suggest that more medicalized attitudes are not necessarily found among groups the most likely to have the condition in question, but those who find it the most difficult to imagine themselves being in that situation.