Health Value and Self-Esteem as Predictors of Wellness Behaviors.

摘要

Understanding and predicting positive health behaviors are a major concern to health promotion professionals. Consequently, research efforts have been aimed at examining the factors which underlie the practice of wellness behaviors. Although health value and self-esteem are two variables which have been considered important in the understanding of health behavior, little has been done to study how these factors relate independently to health behavior. 'Lifestyle' surveys were collected from 3,045 Navy personnel. These surveys addressed a variety of health and fitness-related behaviors, health value, and self-esteem. The value that one placed on health was the best predictor of specific health behaviors as well as the general practice of wellness behaviors. Self-esteem did not predict specific health behaviors, but did predict the general practice of wellness behaviors after controlling for the the value placed on health. These findings indicate that health value is an independent predictor of specific health behaviors as well as the general practice of many different wellness behaviors. Keywords: Health value; Self-esteem; Health behaviors; Wellness behaviors. (jg)