Effects of Multidimensional Self-Esteems on Health Promotion Behaviors in Adolescents

Abstract

Objective: To explore the relationships between multidimensional self-esteems and health behaviors among adolescents by demographic background factors, so as to provide an important reference for the intervention of health promotion behavior and self-esteem education in the future.

Methods: Taking adolescents in Chongqing as the object, this paper investigates the students in 24 primary and secondary schools (half of health promotion schools and half of non-promotion schools) by means of Stratified random sampling, and Using SPSS 21.0 and AMOS 19.0 statistical analysis software to process the collected data.

Results: 1) gender and age significantly affected adolescents' self-esteem and health promotion behavior, which showed that boys's perception of self-esteem was lower than that of girls, while girls were more likely to implement health promotion behavior than boys; 2) Children from two parent families or families with higher parental education are more able to implement health promotion behavior and enjoy higher self-esteem, while family economic status has no effect on adolescents' self-esteem and health promotion behavior; 3) Compared with students in ordinary schools, adolescents in health promotion schools (HPS) have higher self-esteem and can implement health promotion behavior more; 4) The higher the self-esteem of adolescents, the better their health promotion behavior; The higher the sense of interpersonal ability, the more able to implement social support behavior; The higher the sense of physical ability and physiological value, the more able to implement sports behavior; The higher the sense of academic ability, the more able to implement nutritional behavior; The higher the external recognition and physiological value, the better the performance of nutritional behavior and stress management; The higher the internal evaluation, the more able to implement health responsibility and exercise behavior.

Conclusion: Socio-economic background can indeed have a direct or indirect impact on adolescent health promotion behavior, and multidimensional self-esteem can explain about 70% of the variation of health promotion behavior, which seems to suggest that improving adolescent self-esteem is the focus of health promotion and health education in the future.

Keywords: association study; background factors; evaluation orientation; health promotion behavior; health promotion school; multidimensional self-esteem.