Abstract
The importance of puberty on later health status and behavior is indisputable, which also means that it is worth making intervention efforts during this period of life. However, whether better health-related knowledge is correlated with favorable health behavior in adolescents is an important, still unanswered question. Our objective was to examine this relationship. The participants were ninth-grade secondary school students. Data were collected using anonymous, self-administered questionnaires. The knowledge-related questions were compiled by the authors, while the questions concerning eating habits, physical activity, demographic and socioeconomic data were taken from the Health Behavior in School-Aged Children survey. The relationship between knowledge and behavior was investigated with structural equation modeling adjusted for gender, age, and socioeconomic status. The results demonstrated a good fit to the data, but better knowledge was not related to behavior in our sample. This finding suggests that adolescents’ health behavior is highly influenced by the living context; therefore, appropriate knowledge is necessary but not sufficient to improve adolescents’ behavior. Hence, comprehensive health promotion programs could provide solutions for encouraging healthy behavior.
Highlights
The importance of puberty on later health status and behavior is indisputable, because this period is associated with an increased risk of many noncommunicable diseases and hazardous behavior
The risks of this period mean that it is worth making prevention and intervention efforts during puberty, but the interventions have to be tailored to this special target group [1]
The knowledge-related questions were compiled by the authors, while the questions concerning health behavior and demographic and socioeconomic data were taken from the Hungarian version of the Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC) survey [9]
Summary
The importance of puberty on later health status and behavior is indisputable, because this period is associated with an increased risk of many noncommunicable diseases and hazardous behavior.The risks of this period mean that it is worth making prevention and intervention efforts during puberty, but the interventions have to be tailored to this special target group [1].One potential tool can be the promotion of health literacy, which is founded on education opportunities throughout the lifespan. The importance of puberty on later health status and behavior is indisputable, because this period is associated with an increased risk of many noncommunicable diseases and hazardous behavior. It is of utmost importance to help people improve their ability to translate their knowledge into positive health behavior, and health education can be one approach to achieve this [2]. It is an important question whether better health-related knowledge predicts favorable health behavior, well-established evidence is needed to develop effective interventions. Taking into consideration that adolescents belong to a separate and unique layer of the population, we can assume that the results of studies carried out in other populations will not be fully generalizable to this
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