Investigating the Status of Health Promoting Behaviors and Its relation to Self-Efficacy and Social Support in Female Heads of Suburban Households of Urmia City

Health promoting behaviors are one of the key determinants of health. One of the most important situations in which health promoting behaviors are of particular importance, is about female marginalized households. Therefore, this study was conducted to determine the mean scores of health promoting behaviors and its six dimensions, and also its relation to self-efficacy, social support and demographic factors in the women-headed families of Urmia suburb in 2017.

This was a descriptive-analytic study and its statistical population was all the female heads of the suburban families of Urmia of which 384 were selected. Data were collected through demographic questionnaires, perceived social support, general self-efficacy and Walker Health Promoting Behavior Inventory. Descriptive statistics including mean and standard deviation were used to describe descriptive characteristics and, Pearson and Kendall's correlation tests were used to describe analytical features.

The mean of total health promoting behaviors was 111.62±20.45. Self-efficacy, perceived social support and demographic characteristics of marriage and education had a significant positive correlation with health promoting behaviors (P<0.001), but there was no significant positive correlation between occupation and age with health promoting behaviors.

According to the findings of this research, health authorities and health care providers can found self-efficacy increase for female heads of households by designing health promoting education programs. Also governmental organizations and families with supplying necessary emotional supports can provide an area of social support increase and consequently, a change in behavior, for suburbanized female heads of households.