Natalie Schüz

• PhD
• Project Manager at German Pension Insurance/Deutsche Rentenversicherung Oldenburg-Bremen

Objectives Health behaviour theories outline how cognitions predict behaviours, but rarely specify the temporal relation between cognitions and behaviours. It is not known whether these predictive relationships vary depending on temporal resolution or whether the relative influence of cognitions varies with measurement schedules. The current explor...

Aim of the study: In Germany, a disability that prevents a person from fully participating in the labor market can partly be compensated for financially with temporary disability pension. Due to fewer financial resources, this group is at a higher risk of poverty, which in conjunction with a worse health status might be related to other limitation...

Objective: Cancer is associated with negative health and emotional outcomes in those affected by it, suggesting the need to better understand the psychosocial determinants of illness outcomes and coping. The Common Sense Model (CSM) is the leading psychological model of self-regulation in the face of illness, and assumes that subjective illness re...

The purpose of this study is to examine the immediate, everyday impact of health warnings on cigarette packages on potential smoking cessation mediators and to test for differences in immediate reactions to branded and plain tobacco packaging during the transition phase when plain packs where first introduced in Australia. Two Ecological Momentary...

Smokers and non-smokers can encounter a variety of anti-smoking messages in their everyday life. Anti-smoking warnings often involve fear appeals to which particularly smokers may react in a defensive manner by avoiding or derogating the messages, or downplaying their personal risk. However, previous studies testing the effects of anti-smoking warn...

Zusammenfassung Ziel der Studie Die Studie erfasst den praktischen Handlungs- und Forschungsbedarf für die psychosomatische und orthopädische Rehabilitation aus Sicht von Rehabilitand:innen und Mitarbeitenden in der Rehabilitation. Methodik Das Projekt gliederte sich in eine Identifizierungs- und eine Priorisierungsphase. In der Identifizierungspha...

Background: Smokers can respond defensively to health risk communication such as on-pack warning labels, potentially reducing their effectiveness. Theory suggests that risk perception together with self-efficacy reduces defensive responses and predicts target behaviours. Currently, tobacco warning labels globally predominantly target risk and do n...

Objective: Demographic changes with an increasing number of people receiving pensions and a decreasing number of working people paying into the pension system represent major challenges for the German social security system. In particular, it is important to support people to continue working so that there is no (premature) reduction in their earn...

Aim of the study: In Germany, a disability that prevents a person from fully participating in the labor market can partly be compensated for financially with temporary disability pension. Due to fewer financial resources, this group is at a higher risk of poverty, which in conjunction with a worse health status might be related to other limitations...

Purpose: Individuals receiving a temporary disability pension (TDP) should get the opportunity to return to work (RTW). The current study aims to determine the factors contributing to RTW. Methods: 453 individuals on TDP were interviewed at three measurement points (T1, T2 = T1 + approximately 7 months, T3 = T1 + approximately 17 months). Socio-dem...

Objective: This research examined if childhood health motivation was associated with adult health behaviors and objectively measured health outcomes. Method: Data were from the Childhood Determinants of Adult Health study. Children aged 9 to 15 years in 1985 completed a questionnaire with health motivation items. In 2004-2006, when aged 26 to 36, p...

Purpose: There is a global increase in chronic, degenerative illnesses that require long-term intervention and support as a result of the aging population. The majority of support needs are met by informal family caregivers. While there have been three decades of research focusing on caregivers in general, the extent to which research has focused...

Objectives: In recent years, there has been growing research interest in using nicotine replacement medications to aid smoking reduction prior to a quit attempt. Gaining a better understanding of how treatments influence smoking reduction may allow for better tailoring of treatments and, ultimately, better cessation outcomes. The objective of the...

In this chapter, we will outline the basic tenets of self-affirmation theory and how self-affirmation has been shown to affect different contexts of human functioning. We will address commonly studied psychological benefits of self-affirmation as potential pathways of increasing well-being, discuss ways to induce self-affirmation, and detail how pe...

Objective: Cancer and anxiety/depression frequently co-occur, leading to poorer outcomes for these illnesses. However, the majority of existing research investigates how participants view single illnesses alone. This study aimed to explore the content of individuals’ multimorbid representations and how these relate to their coping behaviours and se...

Introduction Research rarely considers the origin or history of a cancer patient’s anxiety and/or depression, instead assuming that these illnesses are related to the cancer experience. The aim of this study was to compare differences in the support needs of people who have experienced anxiety/depression as part of the cancer experience and people...

Discretionary food choices (snacks) contribute up to a third of the daily energy intake and potentially contribute to energy imbalance and weight gain. Individual snack intake behaviour is guided by internal and external cues, with social cues (seeing others eat, being alone) consistently showing the strongest effects. A wide body of (mainly labora...

Many messages that aim at changing people’s health behaviors highlight the negative consequences of continuing to engage in current behaviors (insufficient physical activity and smoking). However, such messages are often less effective than desired because people respond defensively to threatening communication by ignoring or derogating it. In this...

Objective: Action planning can help translate physical activity intentions into action by linking situational cues with behavioral responses. Dyadic planning extends action planning and refers to target persons forming plans for their own behavior change together with partners. This study investigated whether a dyadic planning intervention could i...

Purpose With the limited reach of pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) and low levels of daily physical activity in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a need exists to increase daily exercise. This study evaluated telephone health-mentoring targeting home-based walking (tele-rehab) compared to usual waiting time (usual care) followed by group P...

Aims This study tests whether enhancing a currently used emotive graphic smoking health warning with a self-affirmation component reduces cigarette consumption, and whether potential effects are stronger in heavier smokers, as suggested by previous research. Methods Participants (n = 265) were randomly allocated to a self-affirmation (reflecting o...

Background: Diseases such as skin cancer often have a very long latency period. For adolescents, especially, it may be difficult to grasp that current risk behavior is related to future health outcomes. This study examines the role of health-related time perspective (i.e. the degree to which short-term outcomes are discounted over long-time health...

It is well established that environmental stimuli influence smoking in light, and to a lesser degree, heavy smokers. A 2-factor model of dependence suggests that the influence of stimulus control is masked among heavier smokers who primarily smoke for nicotine maintenance. The current study aimed to assess the influence of stimulus control across a...

Objectives: Individual eating behavior is a risk factor for obesity and highly dependent on internal and external cues. Many studies also suggest that the food environment (i.e., food outlets) influences eating behavior. This study therefore examines the momentary food environment (at the time of eating) and the role of cues simultaneously in pred...

Background There is substantial scope for improvement in the current arsenal of smoking cessation methods and techniques: even when front-line cessation treatments are utilized, smokers are still more likely to fail than to succeed. Studies testing the incremental benefit of using nicotine patch for 1–4 weeks prior to quitting have shown pre-quit n...

Discretionary eating behaviour (“snacking”) is dependent on internal and external cues. Individual differences in the effects of these cues suggest that some people are more or less likely to snack in certain situations than others. Previous research is limited to laboratory-based experiments or survey-based food recall. This study for the first ti...

This article provides an overview of the risks of sun exposure and reviews the psychological literature on sun-tanning behavior, sun protection behavior, and skin cancer prevention. The different forms of skin cancer, their incidence, and causation are described briefly. The psychological predictors of sun exposure and sun protection behavior are r...

Anxiety and depression are common comorbidities in people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). While these comorbidities could potentially lead to a higher motivation to learn about self-management, they could also inhibit patients from translating this knowledge into appropriate self-management behaviours. This paper explores the mod...

Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) methods for the capture of real-world data in real time have seen significant advances, both in popularity and application, over the past few years. As a research methodology, EMA offers considerable advantages and has proven to be particularly suited to the study of substance dependence research. Using EMA, re...

Patches are traditionally started on the day a quit attempt begins. Recently, a number of studies have established that the patch's effectiveness is improved by starting the treatment before quitting [pre-quit patch (PQP) use]. In an exploratory study, we investigate a proposed mechanism through which PQP use might promote abstinence: that PQP redu...

Arguably, the greatest advantage of ecological momentary assessment (EMA) studies is that data are collected repeatedly in real-time and real-world situations, which reduces recall and situational biases and thus improves the accuracy and validity of the data collected. However, the validity of EMA data is contingent upon compliance rates. If parti...

To assess benefits of telephone-delivered health mentoring in community-based chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Cluster randomised controlled trial. Tasmanian general practices: capital city (11), large rural (3), medium rural (1) and small rural (16). Patients were invited (1207) from general practitioner (GP) databases with COPD diagn...

Objective: Health promotion often faces the problem that populations with high behavioral risk profiles respond defensively to health promotion messages by negating risk or reactant behavior. Self-affirmation theory proposes that defensive reactions are an attempt of the self-system to maintain integrity. In this article, we examine whether a self-...

Our objective is to examine the role of planning skills for translating intentions into physical activity via planning cognitions. A study with 534 adolescents was conducted. Over 4 weeks, intention, planning cognitions (prospective anticipation of when, where, and how to perform activities), planning skills (successful past planning experiences),...

This study investigated gender differences in preventive nutrition during the BSE and foot-and-mouth disease crisis in Germany using Bandura’s social-cognitive theory as a framework. Cross-sectional data from an online study of meat consumption were collected from 767 participants (mean age = 31.85 years, SD = 10.15). Data were analysed by means of...

The adequacy of the UV Index (UVI), a simple measure of ambient solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation, has been questioned on the basis of recent scientific data on the importance of vitamin D for human health, the mutagenic capacity of radiation in the UVA wavelength, and limitations in the behavioral impact of the UVI as a public awareness tool. A wor...

To promote sun safety by implementing different plans for sunscreen use, different psychological interventions are compared. Self-regulatory strategies such as action planning and coping planning are seen as proximal predictors of actual behavior. The study compares a pure planning intervention with a broader resource communication and examines dif...

Sun protection standards among teenagers are low while sun exposure peaks in this age group. Study 1 explores predictors of adolescent protection intentions and exposure behavior. Study 2 tests the effectiveness of an intervention based on these predictors. Study 1(cross-sectional, N = 207, ages 15-18) and Study 2 (RCT, N = 253, ages 13-19) were co...

Objective: Stage theories of health behavior are popular and of high practical relevance. Tests of the validity of these theories provide limited evidence because of validity and reliability problems. This study provides a bottom-up approach to identify behavioral stages from examining differences in underlying mindsets. We examine the concurrent v...

The study examines whether self-efficacy mediates between intention and behavior, and whether appearance norms and self-efficacy are additive or synergistic predictors of sunscreen use. At two measurement points in time, 14 weeks apart, 154 individuals responded to an online questionnaire. Moderated mediation was tested by hierarchical regression a...

This study compares a motivational skin cancer prevention approach with a volitional planning and self-efficacy intervention to enhance regular sunscreen use. A randomized controlled trial (RCT) was conducted with 205 women (mean age 25 years) in three groups: motivational; volitional; and control. Sunscreen use, action planning, coping planning an...

Sun safety behaviors to prevent skin cancer, such as sunscreen use, are difficult to adopt and maintain. Most social-cognitive theories assume that the intention to change a behavior is the best predictor of actual change. But unforeseen barriers emerge, or people give in to temptations, such as getting a tan despite their initial good intentions....

Planning is supposed to mediate between intention and behavior. The study examines whether such a mediation also exists in the context of sunscreen use. Moreover, the question is raised whether health risk perception might moderate such a mechanism. A longitudinal online study was conducted with three measurement points in time. Sunscreen use, inte...

Planning is assumed to translate intentions into health behaviors. However, this may fail due to a lack of perceived self-efficacy. People do not tackle challenging tasks if they harbor self-doubts, even if they have made a good action plan. The present two descriptive longitudinal studies are designed to examine the putative moderating role of sel...

If-then planning has proven an effective intervention for health behaviour change. Planning interventions have stronger effects in individuals with strong intentions than in those without. This matched/mismatched effect should also affect retention. Research on tailoring interventions suggests that mismatched interventions have detrimental effects...

Regular dental flossing has been widely recommended to prevent periodontal diseases. Nevertheless, compliance is below a desirable level. This study evaluates the effects of a brief behavioural intervention on dental flossing and determines whether the effects of such an intervention are stronger in a specific subgroup of individuals (those intendi...

Research of the Methodology Group at the Freie Universität Berlin focuses on subjective well-being, mood regulation, health psychology, and the development of new methods for the analysis of psychological data. In particular, we are interested in the role mood regulation plays for subjective well-being and the way people adapt to life events. In te...

Stage theories of health behavior change assume that individuals pass through qualitatively different stages on their way to the adoption of health behaviors. Three common stages (preintention, intention and action) can be defined by stage transitions included in current stage theories and supported by evidence. The present study examines whether t...