RT - Journal Article T1 - Health-Promoting Behaviors and Psychosocial Well-Being of University Shahid Sadoqi Yazd Academic Staff in Iran JF - sjimu YR - 2013 JO - sjimu VO - 21 IS - 3 UR - http://sjimu.medilam.ac.ir/article-1-1155-en.html SP - 12 EP - 21 K1 - : health-promoting behaviors K1 - ps-ychosocial well-being K1 - University Acade-mic staff AB - Introduction: Health includes a spectrum of elements such as physical, psychological, moral, social, intellectual and environmental. Proper nutrition, enough physical activity, avoidance from dangerous behaviors and early diagnosis of ailments signs are all necessary to achieve the highest level of physical health. Moreover, health improvement will help populations thro-ugh enhancement in their own health control. Considering this fact that about 50% of all expenses are due to unhealthy lifestyle, we decided to examine health promoting behaviors amongst academic staff of Yazd University of Medical Sciences. Materials & Methods: Totally, 142 teachers in Yazd Shahid Sadoqi University participated in this cross-sectional study through census met-hod. Data were collected using an HpLp-II que-stionnaire which involved 52 items, 2 categories and 6 sub-scales. First category covered health-promoting behaviors which included health responsibility, physical activity and nutritional habits subscale. Second category consisted of psychosocial well-being, which included comp-onents such as spiritual growth, interpersonal relations, and stress management subscale. Each question was valued considering likert scale ranging from 52 to 208. The collected data entered in SPSS and analyzed by statistical tests including X2, T-Test and Correlation. Findings: Results from 142 questionnaires sho-wed that 26.8% of participants were female and the remaining, 73.2%, were male. 6.3% of the participants were single and 93.7% were marr-ied. 51.4% of them were specialist. Results sh-owed that the more participants evaluated their health as good, the more they got higher scores in health promoting behaviors. Comparison of two genders in health prompting behaviors gr-oup showed that female staff achieved higher score in nutritional behavior, health respon-sibility and interpersonal relations but the differ-rences were not statistically significant. Evalu-ating health prompting behaviors with conside-ring marital status of participants showed that married acquired higher scores in physical activity and nutritional behavior in comparison with single participants, but these differences are not statically significant too. Only a few number of participants showed health respon-sibility (10.6% to 18.4%). Altogether, scores regarding physical activity in both genders were low in contrast with other measures of health promoting behaviors and only 18.24% to 28.8% of participants obeyed a scheduled physical activity program. Diet patterns showed that the portions of vegetable and whole grains in part-icipants’ diet were below the recommended amount. Moreover, only 50% of subjects ate breakfast. Data regarding stress management showed that about 40% of participants used str-ess management skills and male subjects achi-eved higher scores in this area. Discussion & Conclusion: Results from this study showed that about 60% of participants achieved scores from health promoting behave-iors. The most obtained scores were related to spiritual growth and the weakest one were from physical activity. In other subscales the subjects showed an average manner. Considering this fact that an overall improvement in health pro-moting behaviors will increase academic staff activity, efficiency and productivity, we suggest using the theories of behavior change wich are useful as a foundation for developing interve-ntions to promote health promoting behaviors in academic staffs . LA eng UL http://sjimu.medilam.ac.ir/article-1-1155-en.html M3 ER -