Factors Influencing Health-Promoting Behaviors in Young Adults with Hypertension

This predictive correlational research was aimed to investigate factors influencing on health promoting behaviors of young adults with hypertension. This included perceived health status, perceived barriers to health promoting behaviors and interpersonal influences. The samples of the study consisted of 78 young adult patients with hypertension, aged between 20 to 40 years old, who sought treatment in a hospital in Bangkok, Thailand. The samples were selected using purposive sampling. The instruments used to collect the data consisted of five parts: the demographic questionnaire, the health promoting behaviors questionnaire, the perceived health status scale, the perceived barriers scale and the interpersonal influence scale. The data were analyzed by means of descriptive statistics and multiple regression analysis.
The study showed that the overall health-promoting behaviors of the samples were at a moderate level (mean = 2.48, S.D. = 0.29). Multiple regression analysis revealed that all of the independent variables could explain the variance of health-promoting behaviors of young adults by 22.8% with statistical significance (R² = 0.228, p < .01). There were two factors that influenced health-promoting behaviors: interpersonal relationship (β = 0.338, p < .01) and perceived health status (β = 0.309, p < .01), respectively. Based on the findings, it is recommended that registered nurses should encourage young adults with hypertension to have good health status perceptions. Moreover, family members, friends, and the health care team should encourage patients to adapt to all aspects of health-promoting behaviors.