Evaluating the Tertiary Students’ Willingness to Adopt Health-Promoting Behaviors

<p>With reference to the Health Belief Model (HBM) as a framework, this study examined the perception of health-promoting practices of tertiary students in an outlying university. A reliable and valid survey measuring perceived severity, benefits, barriers, cues to action, preventive behavior, and self-efficacy was completed by 523 multidisciplinary students using a quantitative descriptive-correlational research design. Cues to action was the strongest predictor, followed by perceived benefits and self-efficacy. Results indicated that all HBM components predicted preventive behavior very highly. Notably, perceived barriers were positively associated with preventive behaviors, indicating that respondents appeared resilient. In multivariate analysis, age was not a significant moderator of the association between HBM constructs and preventive behavior. Instead, gender influenced targeted constructs such as perceived severity and benefits but did not generate differences in health behaviors. The importance of cognitive and motivational factors, relative to demographics, in predicting student health behaviors is thereby emphasized. The implication is that, depending on the context, gender-sensitive messages should be included in on-campus interventions to improve attentiveness and reinforce a role for self-confidence. Such interventions across diverse educational contexts may be adapted based on further research.</p>