Health promotion behaviors and its correlation with anxiety and some student's demographic factors of Alborz University of Medical Sciences

Health promotion behavior is one of the health criteria. On the other hand، depression، anxiety and stress are the most common psychological problems among students. The aim of this study was to determine health promotion behaviors and its relation with anxiety and some students’ demographic factors of Alborz University of Medical Sciences. In this descriptive-correlational study، 160 students of the Alborz university were selected through simple random sampling method. The data collection instruments was a demographic questionnaire، «Spielberger Anxiety Inventory» with 40 items and Health- Promoting Lifestyle Profile II (HPLP-II) questionnaire with 52 questions. The validity of instruments was determined by content validity and the reliability was obtained by internal consistency and alpha Cronbach coefficient for Spielberger Anxiety Inventory (α=0. 90) and for (HPLP-II) questionnaire (α=0. 92). The data was analyzed with SPSS/18. Anxiety prevalence among students was 58. 9 percent in this study. Among subsets of health promoting behaviors، spiritual growth index with a mean (2. 99±0. 56) and physical activity index with a mean (2. 16±0. 64)، were assigned to the highest and lowest scores، respectively. Between health promoting behaviors and gender (P<0. 0001) and being native and study of non-school related books (P=0. 001) a significant relationship was found. The relation between anxiety and health promoting behavior was decreasing; hence the strongest significant relationship was between anxiety and spiritual development index (-0. 56). The results indicate anxiety among over than half of students، reverse relationship between health promoting behaviors and anxiety and inappropriate health behaviors، especially in the aspects of health promoting physical activity and nutrition among students. Conducting this research in other universities is recommended.