Adolescents’ dietary habits in light of the Health Belief Model, self-efficacy, optimism and self-control

Abstract

Introduction: Nowadays health maintenance and disease prevention are main social objectives. Several studies are focused on exploring aspects of healthy and unhealthy lifestyles by means of behavioral models. Among these studies those related to nutrition are highly important because obesity and diseases caused by unhealthy eating habits are serious public health concerns not only in our country but also worldwide. Adolescence is a very sensitive lifetime period in terms of developing appropriate eating habits due to physical and psychological changes. Therefore, the focal point of our study has been to detect factors that predict adolescents’ conscious eating preference. Our goal based on the exploration of the relationships between elements of the Health Belief Model, completing with some personality factors (self-efficacy, optimism, self-control), and self-conscious eating.
Methods: Our study was going on with the participation of 440 high school students in Szeged. Thirty-seven percent of the sample were boys, average age was 16.0 years with a standard deviation of 1.2 years. For collecting data we used an online self-administered questionnaire. For statistical analysis we applied correlation and regression analysis.
Results: Our data have revealed several relationships between the elements of Health Belief Model, the psychological factors and self-conscious eating. Referring to the results of regression analysis the importance of healthy eating, the benefits of behavioral change and self-control were the most and self-efficacy the least decisive positive predictors, while perceived barriers predicted negatively self-conscious eating. For boys perceived susceptibility referring to eating habits related diseases and self-efficacy had significant prediction value, for girls these variables did not act as predictors. For both sexes the importance of healthy eating was the most powerful factor.
Conclusion: From our results we can conclude that the Health Belief Model completing with some relevant psychological variables, may serve as a useful theoretical background to have better knowledge of adolescents’ eating habits.