Effect of self-efficacy and task difficulty on compliance with a vegetarian diet in a sample of chronic asthma sufferers

As diets are more frequently recommended for a variety of different medical conditions, it becomes more important to examine the psychological factors which can predict patient compliance with dietary guidelines. The present study examined the correlation between two putative predictors of compliance with a vegetarian diet: task difficulty (appraisal of how difficult it is to adhere to the diet) and self-efficacy (the individual's confidence that s/he can adhere to it). Two situational measures were developed and administered to participants in a study of the efficacy of a strict vegetarian diet for reducing symptoms of chronic asthma. Correlations between scores on these measures of both diet compliance and asthma symptom improvement were not statistically significant; however, the range of the r values was .21--.27 for the compliance analyses and .45--.49 for the analyses between task difficulty and outcome measures, suggesting that with a larger sample these might have been significant.