Mediation role of perceived social support between recurrence risk perception and health behaviour among patients with stroke in China: a cross-sectional study

Objectives To examine whether patients who had a stroke with high recurrence risk perception would have healthier behaviour and to explore whether perceived social support would function as a mediator. Design A cross-sectional study. Setting The study was conducted in a public tertiary hospital in China. Participants A total of 254 patients with stroke were invited to participate, and 250 patients with stroke completed questionnaires validly. Primary and secondary outcome measures Questionnaires were administered offline to collect data, consisting of four parts: general demographics and scales related to recurrence risk perception, perceived social support, and health behaviour. A path analysis and correlation analysis were used to analyse the data. Results Out of 250 patients with stroke, 78.4% had moderately low health behaviour. The majority (70.8%) of these patients were elderly. High recurrence risk perception and high perceived social support were significantly associated with better health behaviour (all p<0.001). Perceived social support mediated the relationship between recurrence risk perception and health behaviour after controlling for age, gender, education and monthly income in the regression model (95% CI 0.263 to 0.460) and the effect value was 0.360. It was also confirmed that perceived social support had the highest mediation effect with a proportion of mediation up to 59.31%. Conclusions Recurrence risk perception and perceived social support were influential factors in promoting health behaviour. Moreover, the impact of recurrence risk perception on health behaviour was partially mediated by perceived social support. Therefore, to enhance the sustainability of health behaviour, it is crucial to inform patients with stroke about the risk of recurrence. Patients with more perception of recurrence risk can improve their recovery confidence and thus perceive more social support.