A survey on general health status of female students during their puberty period and its relevant factors in Qom in 2012

Objective and Puberty problems and the ways dealing with them are very important and girls’ health status in puberty is even more vital. Therefore, besides passing this sensitive puberty period, they have a special condition in terms of their expected role related to their gender in society. So the role of this group has always been considered by researchers. This study aimed to determine general health status of female students during their puberty period and its relevant factors in Qom in 2012. This cross-sectional descriptive-analytic study was conducted among female guidance school students in Qom in 2012. Study sample consisted of 191 girls who were chosen according to multistage cluster sampling methods from Qom girls’ schools. The study data was collected by means of Demographic questionnaire and GHQ-28 standard questionnaire. Eventually the data was analyzed by SPSS software in lower than 0.05 significance according to descriptive and analytic tests including Chi-2 and Fisher's exact test. In this study 69.9% of the students were junior students and 30.4%were in the second year (middle year) of guidance school. 31.4% of these students’ mothers had high school degrees and 8.9% of them were illiterate. 41.6% of the fathers had university degrees and 2.1% were illiterate. 85.9% of the mothers were housewives and 13.1% were employed. Students’ General Health Status mean and standard deviation were 26.87±14.72 respectively. The results demonstrated that 48.2% of students had a normal health status, 31.4% had a minor inconvenience, 18.3% had an average inconvenience, and 2.1% had a serious inconvenience. Eventually the current study demonstrated that according to General Health ranking, the health grades of studied students were in minor inconvenience range and unfortunately the studied students were not in normal general health status.