The stage model and processes of change in dietary fat reduction

This paper reports research showing that a modified version of Prochaska & DiClemente's (1982) stage model of behaviour change can account for dietary fat reduction in a sample of 133 young English adults. Prochaska & DiClemente's model posits five sequential stages through which people pass in the course of behaviour change. The current research developed a new, simplified staging questionnaire which successfully categorized respondents into groups whose dietary fat consumption differed as the model predicts—that is, those in later stages were consuming less dietary fat than those in earlier stages. The research focused on four social and psychological processes which Prochaska & DiClemente argue operate most powerfully at the four different stage transitions. Results showed that two of the processes (consciousness raising and self‐liberation) could, between them, distinguish all five stages from each other. The two processes had their decisive impact in the predicted order (i.e. consciousness raising discriminating between earlier stages and self‐liberation distinguishing between later stages) but they did not operate at the particular stage transitions reported in Prochaska and his colleagues’ own research. The other two processes (i.e. self re‐evaluation and helping relationships) did not discriminate between people at different stages. This suggests that Prochaska & DiClemente's findings cannot entirely be replicated in this domain.