Using Stage Of Change To Understand Dentists’ Medicaid Participation Behavior

Abstract

Stage of Changes theories hypothesize that individual professionals and teams differ according to the “Stage” of their change, with different “Stages-of-Change” models offering theoretical assumptions about the steps that professionals or teams in health care must take to achieve the intended changes. Stages-of-change theories state that the stages differ according to the professionals’ and teams’ awareness of and motivation to perform a specific behavior.1 Each stage is governed by different factors and requires different strategies for change. Such theories naturally lead to the distinction of different subgroups or segments in a target group.2 Accordingly, different theories have been used to explain dentists’ Medicaid participation behavior, but most theories treat dentists as a homogenous group that shares the same determinants and motives to participate.2 In contrast, a theoretical approach utilizing “Stages of Readiness to Change” hypothesizes that groups can be categorized according to their “Stage” of readiness to undertake a behavior.