Personal, Familial, School and Community Factors Related to the Development of Health Risk Behaviors AmongElementary School Students

Autor: Wen-chi Wu, 吳文琪
Rok vydání: 2005
Druh dokumentu: 學位論文 ; thesis
Popis: 93
Background: Health behavior in childhood is an important predictor for adult health. Researching on the topic can facilitate the planning for health promotion and disease prevention intervention projects. By applying multi-facet ecological model, effects of personal, familial, school and community factors on childhood health risk behaviors can be better understood. Purposes: 1. To understand the distributions and latent structure of research subjects’ health risk behaviors. 2. To explore the relationships between personal, familial, school, and community factors and research subjects’ health risk behaviors from multilevel perspective. 3. To compare the distributions and latent structure of research subjects’ health risk behaviors in a three-year period. 4.To identify factors related to the change of research subjects’ health risk behaviors. Method: Secondary data analysis was conducted by using the three waves’ data of 4th graders’ cohort of Child & Adolescent Behaviors in Long-term Evolution (CABLE) project from 2001 as the main source of research subjects. Descriptive analysis, correlation analysis, and multilevel analysis were used to analyze cross-sectional and longitudinal data. Results: There are three types of 6th graders’ health risk behaviors: (1) unhealthy behaviors, including staying-up late, eating food before sleeping, eating fast-food, suppressing urination, playing video games over 2 hours, and watching television over 2 hours; (2) aggressive behaviors, including using vulgar language, destroying things when angry, fighting with others, and destroying public property; (3) substance using behaviors, including smoking, drinking alcohol, and chewing betel nut. The subtotal scores of these three types of health risk behaviors varied among classes and increase over time. Personal variables relate to research subjects’ health risk behaviors include sex, school achievement, and the extent to which subject loves his/her school. Familial variables include parent’s marital status, categorie of occupation, parent’s support, family activities, and the extent of punishment. School variables include school principal’s sex, teacher’s sex and age, school size, and teacher’s working stress. Community variables include the rate of educational level above junior college of population over 15 years old, low-income household rate, and residential area. The variables relate to the change of health risk behaviors during the three-year period include student’s sex and the change of relationship with his teacher of personal facet; parent’s marriage status, occupational level, the change of parent’s support, the change of family activities, and the change of the extent of punishment of familial facet; school principal’s sex and school size of school facet; residential area of community facet. Recommendations: In designing intervention projects on prevention, different types of childhood health risk behaviors should be taken into consideration respectively. Target populations should include students, parents and teachers. Community characteristics, especially, should be considered and embraced. For parents, more and constant interactions with children are essential; inadequate punishment should be avoided. Schools must develop a way to help release teacher’s stress and strengthen students’ loves for school. For government, to increase general public’s access to information regarding childhood health risk behaviors and to provide more subsidy and welfare for low income groups are also important.
Databáze: Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations