Factors Affecting Health Behaviors of Health Volunteers, Chanthaburi Province

บทคัดย่อ

The objectives of this study were to describe health behavior and to examine the factors influencing health behavior of health volunteers.

The study was a correlational research. The participants of the study were health volunteers in Chanthaburi province. The sample consisted of 384 village health volunteers recruited by multistage random sampling. Data were collected with selfadministered questionnaires. The instruments which were developed by the researcher and adapted from the previous studies including demographic characteristics, health behavior perception and 10 National health act of health behavior questionnaires. The reliabilities of questionares were analyzed using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. Descriptive statistic analysis, Point Biserial Correlation Coefficients, Peason’s Product Moment Correlation, and Stepwise Multiple Regression Analysis was used for data analysis.

The results of the study revealed that factors positively related to health behavior of health volunteers were self efficiency in achieving health behavior, perceived susceptibility, age, receiving training, attending the meeting and perceive motivation to perform the duties. Factors that could predict health behavior of health volunteers were self efficiency in achieving health behavior, perceived susceptibility, receiving training, and age at the level of 15.2 % (R² = .152, p<.001). The regression equation was as follows:

The findings will be used as a guideline for nurse practitioners and people concerned to develop health behaviors of village health volunteers, which focus on increasing self efficiency and perceived susceptibility including provision of training to increase knowledge and skills continuously.