Predicting (un)healthy behavior: A comparison of risk-taking propensity measures

We compare four different risk-taking propensity measures on their ability to describe and to predict actual risky behavior in the domain of health. the risk-taking propensity measures we compare are: (1) a general measure of risktaking propensity derived from a one-item survey question (dohmen et al.,2011),(2) a risk aversion index calculated from a set of incentivized monetary gambles (holt & laury,2002),(3) a measure of risk taking derived from an incentive compatible behavioral task-the balloon analog risk task (lejuez et al.,2002),and (4) a composite score of risk-taking likelihood in the health domain from the domain-specific risk taking (dospert) scale (weber et al.,2002). study participants are 351 clients of health centers around witbank,south africa. our findings suggest that the one-item general measure is the best predictor of risky health behavior in our population,predicting two out of four behaviors at the 5% level and the remaining two behaviors at the 10% level. the dospert score in the health domain performs well,predicting one out of four behaviors at the 1% significance level and two out of four behaviors at the 10% level,but only if the dospert instrument contains a hypothetical risk-taking item that is similar to the actual risky behavior being predicted. incentivized monetary gambles and the behavioral task were unrelated to actual health behaviors; they were unable to predict any of the risky health behaviors at the 10% level. we provide evidence that this is not because the participants had trouble understanding the monetary trade-off questions or performed poorly in the behavioral task. we conclude by urging researchers to further test the usefulness of the one-item general measure,both in explaining health related risk-taking behavior and in other contexts.