Predicting the Adolescents’ Tendency to High-Risk Behaviors According to Parenting Style and Healthy Life Style

According to most of the psychologists and researchers in the field of ethology, adolescence is a very sensitive and critical period. Any kind of negligence in educating the adolescents in this period can bring about irrecoverable damages. The purpose of the present study was to predict the adolescents’ tendency to high-risk behaviors according to parenting style and healthy life style.

The research method was descriptive in correlational type. The statistical population included the secondary high school students in the city of Qom in academic year 2019-20. The research sample included 252 students who were selected through clustered random sampling method. The applied instruments included the adolescents’ risk (Mohammadzade and Ahmadi, 2013), adolescents’ parenting style (Naghashan, 1979) and health promoting life style (Walker et.al, 1987). the data analysis was conducted through Pearson correlation and multiple regression methods.

The results showed that there is a significant relationship between parenting style (control, affection) and three aspects of life style (spiritual growth, health accountability, and exercise and physical activity) and there is no significant relationship between the adolescents’ risk and three aspects of life style (interpersonal relationship, stress management and nutrition). Moreover, according to the calculated coefficient of determination, parenting styles and healthy life style in adolescents can explain 30% of the changes in their risk. Furthermore, according to the calculated Beta coefficient, healthy life style has more effect on the emergence of adolescents’ risk than the parenting style.

The findings of the present study showed that the effect of health promoting life style in the adolescents is more than that of the parenting style in them. Therefore, educational and training planners should sufficiently attend to the adolescents’ health promoting life style.