Abstract:
Good health promoting behavior can prevent diseases in the middle-aged women. The purpose of this descriptive study was to determine the health promoting behaviors and related factors of middle aged women in Saraburi province. Self-administered questionnaires were sent to 443 women who were randomly selected by multistage cluster sampling and simple random sampling during February 1st to March 31st , 2004 . The results revealed that the sample was 49 .3 years on average. The body mass index (BMI) was 24 .3 kg/m². 66.1% had no recent physical illness, 46 .7% were menopaused. Three fourths were married. Of 50.8% of women who lived in the municipal area, 25.5%were housewives, 25% worked as employees, while those lived in suburb, 38.5% worked in agriculture. The mean income of the middle aged women was 8,016 bahts per month and 66.3% of them reported stress. The majority (88.6% in municipal and 88.3% in suburb area) recognized the benefit of health promoting behaviors, including annual physical check up, physical exercise, stress reduction activities, healthy diet and the influence of interpersonal relationship. More than half (62.6%) reported no obstacles to practice health promoting behaviors. Most women (72.5%) followed healthy practice recommendation. Half of them exercised moderately, while 37% did not exercise adequately. Furthermore, most women (65.1%) moderately ate healthy diet and a few (27.7%) strictly ate, and 66.7% maintained moderately good interpersonal relationship. Few women (17 .8%) highly took stress-reduction activities. It was shown from this study that there were statistically significant association between health promoting behaviors and personal factors - education, income, perceived obstacles of practice and influence of interpersonal relationship. There was also statistically significant difference in exercise behavior, healthy diet and influence of interpersonal relationship between those who lived in the municipal and in suburb area. Therefore, health promotion program for the middle-aged women should be emphasized, particularly on physical exercise, healthy diet and influence of interpersonal relationship .