Health Beliefs and Values Paper

Values Clarification • Values may be described as behavioral standards and needs that work to support a person’s purpose and vision. • Are often a guide in decision making, and a particular individual’s values can be defined as what that person holds to be right or good. • Each person has core values that contribute to that person’s system of beliefs, ideas, and attitudes, and values often affect how a person operates or responds in certain situations. Values Clarification • Values clarification is a self-assessment process that enables you to discover the content and strength of your own system of values. As a process it is more involved with how you have acquired your values than with determining what they should be. • Values are not transmitted or taught, but learned directly from an individual’s life experiences. • They develop, grow and change through interaction with self, the environment and other people. The process is dynamic, throughout the course of life values are continually changing. Values Clarification • The delivery and acceptance of health education and health-promotion programs are influenced by personal, religious, environmental, cultural, political, and economic factors, all of which help create and are affected by individual and societal values. • Is considered a nursing intervention assisting another person to clarify her or his own values in order to facilitate decision making. Values Clarification • Value clarification is a technique for encouraging individuals to relate their thoughts and their feelings and thus enrich their awareness of their own values • Undergoing a values clarification process helps individuals to not only recognize their own values, but understand how their values can assist in making future choices. • Values are influenced by cultural background, gender, religious affiliation, and membership in social groups. Values Clarification • Values change over time in response to changing life experiences. • Recognizing these changes and understanding how they affect one’s actions and behaviors is the goal of the values clarification process. • Values clarification will not tell you what your values should be, it simply provides the means to discover what your values are. Health Beliefs and Values Paper

Questions to Help Individuals to do Values Clarification • • • • • • What am I doing with my life? Am I just reacting to others, or am I in control of the direction of my life? Have I done all that I want, or am I settling for less? Is my life making any difference? What do you regard as your greatest personal achievement to date? What do you regard as your own greatest personal failure to date? Questions to Help Individuals to do Values Clarification • What is the one thing that you do to make other people happy? • What would you do if you had one year to live and were guaranteed success in whatever you attempted? • If you had unlimited time and money, what societal problem would you work to improve? • What three things would you most like to be said about you if you died today? • What is the one thing that other people can do to make me happy? … Health Beliefs and Values Paper