Abstract
The purpose of this study is to identify factors influencing a health-promoting lifestyle among highly educated, married women with or without work outside the home. It is a direct interview, cross-sectional study. Subjects were 250 married, unemployed women and 236 married women employed as teachers. Women who have not graduated college, work only part-time or have no current spouse were excluded. The instruments used were the Health-Promoting Lifestyle Profile (Walker, et al., 1987) and the Habitual Physical Activity Questionnaire (Backe, et al., 1982), The HPLP scores of the employed, married women were significantly lower than those for unemployed respondents. for both groups of respondents, the self-actualization subscale was the highest score and the exercise subscale was the lowest score. The HPLP indicated that exercise is a very weak area. Thus, an increase in exercise time and frequency, especially for highly educated, married women, is suggested. Multiple regression analysis revealed that a health-promoting lifestyle of unemployed, married women was affected by sports activity, leisure-time activity, depression and satisfaction of role allotment. On the other hand, a health-promoting lifestyle of employed, married women was affected by sports activity, leisure-time activity, stress, self-perceived economic status, coffee consumption, husband's help, and maid's help. That is, with more sports activity and leisure-time activity, less depression and more satisfaction of role allotment, unemployed, married women would have higher HPLP scores. Also, with more sports activity and leisure-time activity, less stress, better self-perceived economic status, less coffee consumption, more husband's help and more maid's help, employed, married women would have higher HPLP scores. The results indicate that sports activity and leisure-time activity were the first and the second determinants of health-promoting lifestyle respectively. Therefore, an exercise-centered health-promoting program for highly educated, married women is suggested in the community or workplace. Especially, the program should be designed to be easily approachable for highly educated, employed married women who have more of a role burden compared to unemployed women.
