Despite national efforts to create awareness about acquaintance rape and substance- facilitated sexual assault on college campuses, little empirical research investigates whether college women are incorporating these messages into their social behavior. This exploratory study adds to the existing literature by investigating college women's…

The purpose of this study was to investigate motivational attitudes toward participating in physical activity among international students attending colleges in the United States. Five-hundred twenty-one students participated in this study. The results indicated that the factors of organic development ("keeping good health and physical…

School counselors are charged with helping students in the personal/social, academic, and career development domains. Obesity creates adverse educational outcomes for students along these three domains, suggesting an obesity achievement gap. Thus, school counselors can benefit from knowing which interventions have been shown to be successful in…

Adolescents of low socio-economic position (SEP) are less likely than those of higher SEP to consume diets in line with current dietary recommendations. The reasons for these SEP variations remain poorly understood. We investigated the mechanisms underlying socio-economic variations in adolescents' eating behaviours using a theoretically derived…

The theory of planned behavior identifies important proximal determinants of behavior, including attitude toward the behavior, perception of subjective norms exerted by significant others, and perception of perceived control over performance of the behavior. Because research in the planned behavior tradition has focused on desirable target…

Objective: To explore the effects of brief training in Motivational interviewing (MI) for medical students. Design: Video recordings of consultations between 113 final-year medical students and simulated patients were scored blind by two independent raters with the Motivational Interviewing Skill Code (MISC). Half of the students participated in a…

The association between performance on health literacy measures and health outcomes is well established. The next step is to understand the processes through which health literacy affects health. This review introduces a framework drawing on ideas from health psychology and proposing that associations between health literacy and health outcomes…

Seriously mentally ill women at risk for HIV infection (n = 96) participated in structured interviews assessing sexual and substance-use behavior over a 3-month period. The majority of the women (63.5%) did not use condoms. Consistent with the theory of reasoned action, attitudes toward condom use and perceived social norms about safer sex were…

Previous studies have investigated social images in health-risk behaviors, suggesting that these images are important factors in adolescents' health-related decisions. In this study, 548 secondary school students (aged 14-21 years, M = 16.5 years, SD = 1.3) in Szeged, Hungary, were tested to determine how social attitudes influence the development…

Context: Skin diseases are common occupational illnesses for migrant farmworkers. Farmworkers face many barriers in accessing health care resources. Purpose: Framed by the Health Behavior Model, the purpose of this study was to assess health care utilization for skin disease by migrant Latino farmworkers. Methods: Three hundred and four migrant…

In 2004 and 2005 the author and her colleagues conducted a survey among first-year students at Moscow State University of the Humanities titled "College Students' Attitudes Toward Health and a Healthy Way of Life," to determine students' perceptions and knowledge about a healthy way of life as well as habits fostering and promoting…

Purpose: A secondary analysis of 2000 and 2004 Indiana Youth Tobacco Survey (IYTS) data was conducted to investigate salient environmental and perceptual correlates of adolescents' current and established smoking while controlling for demographic variables such as gender, grade, and race/ethnicity and to compare the pattern of significant…

We explore how marital aspirations are related to the sexual behaviors of adolescents and young adults in Malawi, where HIV/AIDS prevalence among adults exceeds 10%. We also consider whether the specter of AIDS is shaping ideals about marriage. By combining survey data (N = 1,087) and in-depth interviews (N = 133) with young Malawians from the…

Problem: Priority health-risk behaviors, which are behaviors that contribute to the leading causes of morbidity and mortality among youth and adults, often are established during childhood and adolescence, extend into adulthood, and are interrelated and preventable. Reporting Period Covered: September 2010-December 2011. Description of the…

Six priority health risk behaviors contribute to the leading causes of death, disability, and social problems in the United States. These behaviors are often established during childhood and adolescence. They include tobacco use; unhealthy dietary behaviors; inadequate physical activity; alcohol and other drug use; sexual behaviors that may result…