Attribution and the drug use process
ResearchPublished 1979
ResearchPublished 1979
Each year the average American obtains 5.8 prescription drugs and, additionally, takes numerous over-the-counter medications. The total annual cost of prescribed medicines is $5.75 billion, a figure that does not include costs for about 950 million prescriptions dispensed to hospital inpatients and another $4 to 8 billion for OTC medicines. These drugs are taken to prevent, cure, or alleviate a wide variety of diseases and symptoms, both real and imaginary, mild and serious. Questions of interest to attribution theorists regarding this drug use process include the following: what events lead to decisions to initiate, modify, or discontinue drug therapy; what sources of information about one's state of health are used to judge a drug's success or failure; what causal explanations accompany these judgments? This paper explores drug use from an attribution perspective, with a special focus on how people interpret physical and behavioral events before, during, and after drug therapy.
This publication is part of the RAND paper series. The paper series was a product of RAND from 1948 to 2003 that captured speeches, memorials, and derivative research, usually prepared on authors' own time and meant to be the scholarly or scientific contribution of individual authors to their professional fields. Papers were less formal than reports and did not require rigorous peer review.
This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited; linking directly to this product page is encouraged. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial purposes. For information on reprint and reuse permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.
RAND is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.