Factors Factors Associated with Desirable Health Behaviors Among Working-Age Population in Phang Nga Province

Abstract

The research design used Descriptive approach to investigate both the extent
of desirable health behaviors and their associated factors among Phang Nga Province
working-age residents. The research included 351 participants between 15 and 59 years old who were selected through multi-stage random sampling. The research instrument consisted of a validated questionnaire that assessed personal factors together with knowledge and attitude and perceived benefits and barriers and self-efficacy and social support and desirable health behaviors that had been validated with reliability coefficients (Cronbach's alpha and KR-20) ranging from 0.78-0.86, which were considered acceptable. The researchers used descriptive statistics together with Chi-square test and Fisher's exact test and Pearson's correlation coefficient to analyze the data. The survey results showed that most participants demonstrated desirable health behaviors at a good level (66.67%). The research identified gender (p=0.002), occupation (p=0.001), age (r=0.176, p=0.001), income (r=0.144, p=0.007), number of family members (r=-0.107, p=0.044) and working hours (r=-0.129, p=0.016) as significant personal factors linked to desirable health behaviors. The psychosocial factors demonstrated strong associations with desirable health behaviors (p<0.001) with perceived self-efficacy (r=0.558) being the strongest followed by attitude (r=0.420) then social support (r=0.399) and perceived barriers (r=0.303) and knowledge (r=0.263) and perceived benefits (r=0.253). The research indicates that health behavior modification programs should focus on building self-efficacy and positive attitudes and creating healthy workplace policies especially for high-risk occupational groups to achieve effective desirable health behavior promotion.