Betydningen av struktur for adferd i det kommunale folkehelsearbeidet : Hvilke faktorer er assosiert med kontaktmønsteret til norske folkehelsekoordinatorer?

Abstract

Background There’s been an increasing focus on the public health coordinators role in the local public health promotion since the public health law was passed in 2012, despite the increased focus there’s a lack of national surveys on who’s filling these position or how the role is executed. In this paper I am going to investigate which factors affects the communication patterns of the public health workers. Intersectoral cooperation is often highlighted as an important approach within public administration. The communication pattern of the public health coordinators might reveal something about their approach and it would be interesting to identify factors that affects this pattern. According to the Theory of Planned Behaviour it is possible to predict behaviour from attitudes, subjective norms and behavioural control. This is the theoretical framework that has been used to operationalize the independent variables. Method This paper builds on a quantitative survey sent specifically to whomever was responsible for public health in the all of the Norwegian communes. There was a response rate of 64%. The pattern of communication was analysed with a principal component analysis and three unique patters were identified. They were directed at political leadership, administration, and civil society. Three scales were built out of the variables in the three components and a step wise multiple regression analysis was utilised to explore potential predictors.