حیات (Nov 2004)
A comparative investigation on health behaviors of students in primary schools with and with out health educator
Abstract
Introduction: Children's health is an important issue in activities of many international organizations. To prepare the children to understand and practice the ways of healthy life, the schools should play their important role by planning and performing effective health education programs. Materials and Methods: This research is an analytical-descriptive study. The samples included 330 students who were selected through multistage stratified sampling method. The data was gathered by a questionnaire and were analyzed by using the inferential and descriptive statistics. Results: The results showed that there was no statistically significant difference between health behaviors of students in schools with and without health educators in the domains of eye and skin health, nutrition, sleep, rest and physical activity, but there was a significant difference between health behaviors related to ear (2=8.58, p=0.014) and tooth (2=9.35, p=0.009); the students with educator had healthier ear and tooth behaviors than students who didn't have educator. In the domain of mouth and tooth the girls had healthier behaviors than boys. In the domain of physical activity the boys had better health behaviors than girls, having educator or not. Conclusion: Overall, there was no significant difference between health behaviors of students in schools with and without health educators. Formation of healthy behaviors is a multifactorial issue and survey of all factors and variables affecting health behaviors can provide clearer measures for planning the health education programs and optimum usage of resources, manpower, budget and time to promote awareness and performance of health behaviors in schools.
