ABSTRACT
Much psychosocial research on contraceptive choice points to two procedures for influencing the choices of individuals. One approach is to enhance the information available to clients and potential clients of family planning services; the other is to modify contraceptive methods and service delivery systems. This chapter presents a brief overview of the three most popular expectancy-value models: subjective expected utility model, Rosenberg model, and Fishbein model. Some of the initial studies applying expectancy-value concepts to birth control decisions investigated the beliefs people held about the advantages and disadvantages of birth control in general. Models of information integration, different from the information integration presented in the expectancy-value framework, have also been proposed. According to expectancy-value theory, the desirability of each consequence is multiplied by the subjective probability that the consequence will occur and the resulting products are summed.
