Abstract
Changes in disease patterns increase the importance of health-promoting lifestyles in a healthy society. Thus health education in elementary schools is very important because the knowledge of health and health habits in this period become a habitual part of life. The purpose of this study is to identify the performance in promoting healthy lifestyles of elementary school nurses. Such data helps to provide data to judge whether they are capable health educators or not. The subjects were 365 elementary school nurses selected by purposive sample. The data were collected by a self reporting questionnaire from August to October of 1996. The methods used in this study were the health-promoting lifestyle profile developed by Park In Sook (1995) and Licker's flour-point scale. A Cronbach's ${\alpha}$, percentage, mean, standard deviation, ANOVA, Pearson's correlation coffcient and stepwise multiple regression in the SAS package were used to analyze the data. The results of this study were as follows: 1. 37.7% of the sample were aged between 30 and 39 and 33.7% were between 40 and 49. 44.9% of the sample had attended college. 87.7% of the sample were married. 42.5% of the sample were people with a career of 11~20 years, and 26.0% of it had 21 years or more of working experience as an elementary school nurses. 2. The average scores of the family function and the social support were 2.97 and 2.98 respectively. 3. 86.5% of the sample were satisfied with their job. 4. 85.8% of the sample answered that they were healthy and 14.2% answered that they were unhealthy. The average scores of the internal health locus of control and self-esteem were 3.35 and 3.15 respectively. 5. The average score of performance in health-promoting lifestyle variables was 3.16; the average scores for harmonious relationships, regular diet professional health maintenance, sanitary life, self-control, emotional support, diet, rest and sleep, exercise and activity. self-achievement, and diet control were 3.47, 3.30, 2.52. 3.60, 2.92, 3.18, 3.14, 3.11, 2.96, 3.26 and 3.12. The variable with the highest degree of correlation was a sanitary life, whereas the one with the lowest degree was professional health maintenance. 6. A significant difference was found in self-esteem according to age. There was a significant difference in the average score of internal health locus of control according to age and career. 7. There were significant differences in the health-promoting lifestyle performance depending on age, career and monthly household income. The longer the career, the higher the health-promoting lifestyle performance. 8. A weak positive correlation was found between self-esteem and health-promoting lifestyles performance(r=0.417, p<0.001) Also, a weak positive correlation was found between the internal health locus of control and health-promoting lifestyles performance (r=0.386, p<0.001). 9. Heath-promoting lifestyle performance showed significant correlations with family function, social support and job satisfaction. 10. Stepwise multiple regression analysis revealed that the most powerful predictor was the variance of family function. Social support, age, self-esteem, internal health locus of control, perceived heath status and job satisfaction accounted for 55.9% of the variance in heath-promoting lifestyle performance.