Health Promoting Life style and its Related Factors in Adolescent Girls

Article type: Original article Background & aim: One of the main strategies for keeping health is having healthy life style. Due to important role of adolescent health in community health promotion, this study aimed to determine health promoting life style in adolescent girls of high schools and its associated factors in Mashhad, Iran. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 810 girls ranging in age from 14 to 18 years old, who were studying in high schools and selected using cluster sampling from in Mashhad, Iran in 2013. They completed a demographic questionnaire as well as Adolescent Health Promotion (AHP) scale. Data were analyzed by statistical tests of Mann-Whitney U, Kruskal-Wallis, Freedman, Wilcoxon, Spearman correlation coefficient and General linear model. Results: The mean age of subjects was 15.51±0.98 and the mean score of life style was 63.92±12.01. The highest score of life style subscales was allocated to the spiritual growth or life-appreciation (77.66±15.56) and the least to the physical and sport activities (51.66±22.49). There was a significant relationship between the life style score of adolescents with parents’ educational level (mother P=0.024, father P=0.014). However no significant relationship was found between adolescents' life style and their residential area and also parent's job. Among different dimensions of life style, the highest correlation was seen between spiritual growth and life style total score (P=0.01). Conclusion: Based on the findings, it is necessary to prioritize implementing of healthrelated educational programs in order to changing and modification of unhealthy life style related factors, with focus on sport activities as well as health and nutrition. Also it is needed to provide special facilities to select healthy living behaviors among adolescents. Article History: Received: 25-Jul-2013 Accepted: 19-Sep-2013