Chonnam Med J.  2002 Sep;38(3):242-249.

Relationship between Stress Perception and Health Behaviors Practice

• Sohn SJ
• Park KS
• Chang KW
• Ju JW
• Park EY
• Kim SY

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine relationship between stress perception and health behaviors practice. Health behaviors were investigated about 'Alameda 7' such as smoking, alcohol drinking, exercise, duration of sleep, body weight, eating habit of breakfast and snack. Stress was measured by Psychosocial Well-being Index (PWI). The subjects were taken 1,308, 15-64 aged persons in Gwangju area. The data were collected by self-administered questionnaire during 3 weeks from December, 2001. The factors associated with health practice index were sex, marital status, religion and stress perception. The female, married, religious showed better health practices than male, non married or single, non religious retrospectively. The lower the stress perceived, the better health practices showed. In the logistic regression, there were significant differences in health behaviors of exercise, body weight, eating habit of breakfast and health practice index according to stress perception (p<0.05). But there were no difference in health behaviors of smoking, alcohol drinking, duration of sleep, eating habit of snack according to stress perception. Therefore, it is likely that there were associations between stress perception and health behaviors practice. These findings indicate that appropriate management of stress might bring a good life style and might be effective for health promotion and disease prevention. Prospective studies are needed to find a causal relationship between health behaviors and stress perception.

Keyword

Health behavior; Stress; Psychosocial Well-being Index; Health practice index

MeSH Terms

Alcohol Drinking
Body Weight
Breakfast
Eating
Female
Gwangju
Health Behavior*
Health Promotion
Humans
Life Style
Logistic Models
Male
Marital Status
Retrospective Studies
Smoke
Smoking
Snacks
Surveys and Questionnaires
Smoke