Adolescent perceptions of family health behavior: a tenth grade educational activity to increase family awareness of a community cardiovascular risk reduction program.

The influence of the family on health and illness behavior has been dem~nstrated,’-~ but few health education programs have made use of the potential force of child-parent interaction to accomplish the program’s goals. This paper presents the results of a pilot project designed to investigate the effectiveness of such an approach with adolescents and their families. The highschool-based educational project was performed (1) to facilitate communication between adolescents and their parents in order to increase awareness of a community program to reduce cardiovascular risk; (2) to increase adolescents’ judgment of their competence to act as a change agent in relation to family health behavior, and (3) to assess students’ perceptions of their roles in family health behaviors. The study questions were divided into a survey phase and a pilot intervention phase. The survey questions were: What are adolescents’ perceptions of their own and their parents’ current health practices and needs? What is their level of satisfaction with friends, school and personal health? How confident are high-school students that they could help their parents change or modify health behavior? The pilot intervention study question was: Can a high-school based educational activity increase family viewing of a community-wide health education media event? SETTING, POPULATION AND MEASURES Four high schools on the Monterey Peninsula in California (Monterey, North Salinas, Santa Cruz and Pacific Grove) were already involved in various aspects of a smoking cessation and smoking prevention program, conducted as part of the Stanford Five City Project.6 The program attempts to modify five areas of cardiovascular risk (overweight, smoking, cholesterol intake, lack of exercise and stress) by using the media combined with community organization.’ The present project was developed as an adjunct to the high school anti-smoking program. An opportunistic sample was obtained of all 10th grade students in Monterey County currently taking health education or driver education. A precoded, pretested questionnaire was used to collect data on smoking and drug usage, demographic and family health variables and adolescents’ perceptions of their own and their families’ health behavior, twice during the second school semester in February and May 198 1. The students were identified only by a code number constructed by the student from combining their initials and their telephone number. The code number was used to match student’s questionnaires from preto postmeasurement. To maximize homogeneity of the population studied,