Health Promoting Lifestyle and Self-Empowerment in Climacteric Women

Park, Myeung Hee

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to identify the relationship between self-empowerment and a health promoting lifestyle in climacteric women, and to provide the basic data for health promoting intervention. The subjects were 246 women who visited the sports center in Taegu, Korea and ranged in age from 40 to 59. The data was collected during the period from December 2nd to December 15th, 2001. The instruments were the revised health promoting lifestyle scale developed by Park, In Suk(1997) Originally the instruments were developed by Spreitzer(1995) and Jung Hea Joo(1998), who translated it into Korean. The data was analyzed using t-test, ANOVA, Pearson correlation coefficients and stepwise multiple regression. The results of this study were as follows : 1. Mean score of total empowerment was 3.76 and the subcategory 'meaning', had the highest score at 4.08. 2.Mean score of total health promoting lifestyle was 2.83 and in the subcategory, the highest degree of performance was 'sanitary life', followed by 'harmonious relationships' and 'self actualization'. The lowest degree was 'professional health management'. 3. A significant statistical difference between age, education and self-empowerment was found. 4. A significant statistical difference between age, marital status, leisure time activity (hobbies /community service) and a health promoting lifestyle was found. 5. Health promoting lifestyle was positively related to self-empowerment(r=.4592). A health promoting lifestyle was the highest positively related to the subcategory 'impact' (r=.4329). 6. The most important variable affecting the health promoting life style was impact which accounted for 19% of the total variance in stepwise multiple regression analysed. Five variables, impact, age, meaning, marital status and leisure time activity(hobbies/community service) accounted for 26% in promoting a healthy life style. From the results of the study, the following recommendations are presented : 1) Adopting the concept of self-empowerment is required in broad nursing fields. 2) Using and making a self-empowerment promoting program which can cause positive effects on a health promoting lifestyle are required. 3) It is required to check the rank of the subcategories such as meaning, competence, self determination and impact according to the subjects. 4) It is required to check the effects of all variances of self-empowerment, self- efficacy and self-esteem variances through the repeated studies.