Health Promoting Behavior Among School Going Adolescents in Puducherry-A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Background: Health promotion is considered as a process that strengthens health conditions, shapes attitudes, supports behavioural changes to attain the utmost physical and mental health, and organizes the social and physical environment of a person. Aim & Objective: To identify the level of health-promoting behaviour and the associated socio-demographic factors among school-going adolescents in Puducherry. Settings and Design: A cross-sectional analytical study was conducted among 705 school-going adolescents of standard IX-XII from five government and private schools in rural and urban areas. Methods and Material: Multistage sampling was used to select the subjects and the Adolescent Health Promotion Score (AHP 40) was used to assess the health-promoting behaviour of an adolescent. The data was entered in MS Excel and analysed using SPSS v16. Statistical analysis used: Mean ± SD were used to summarize the Total Adolescent Health Promotion Score. Multiple linear regression model was used to assess the association between socio-demographic variables and Adolescent health promotion behaviour. Results: Among the 705 participants, the mean age of the students was 14.9 (±1.4). The mean AHP score of the students was 147.78(±20.59). It was observed that the majority of the students (53%) had a high health promoting behaviour. The number of siblings and father’s profession significantly predicted higher scores of adolescent health promoting behaviour. Conclusions: More than half of the student population had high level of health promoting behaviour. The family and school related variables had significant association with the health promoting behaviour of adolescents

Validity and reliability of the Persian version of the Short‐Form Adolescent Health Promotion scale: Methodological study

“…While the AHP‐40 has been translated and psychometrically tested in Persian, Chinese, Hindi, and Spanish languages, 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 the AHP‐SF has not been translated into other languages yet. Aubi et al 29 translated the AHP‐40 scale into Persian and measured its validity and reliability.…”