Understanding Adolescent Health Behaviour through Injunctions

Abstract

Adolescents account for a quarter of Indian population. Health related behaviour of adolescents are studied mainly from a socio ecological perspective pertaining to extrinsic factors. There is a critical need to study the relevant information about the intrinsic factors related to their health. Injunction, a concept of Transactional Analysis, is an intrinsic factor of health behaviour. The present study was conducted with an objective to estimate prevalent injunctions among adolescents and to find the association between Injunctions and Health Behaviour in adolescents. A descriptive cross sectional survey was conducted among students of higher secondary schools of Ernakulam District of Kerala. The sample consisted of 2008 adolescents of age 16 to 17 years. Data was collected using a pretested structured questionnaire. Besides the socio demographic variables, Pearl Drego Injunction Scale and Health Behavior Assessment Tool were incorporated in the questionnaire. The collected data was properly coded and entered in Microsoft Excel and analysed using SPSS version 20.0. Spearman’s rank correlation test was used to find association between Injunctions and Health Behaviour. The significance level was kept at 5% (p=0.05). The prevalent injunctions varied from 5 to 55.8%. The prevalent injunctions that showed a higher percentages were, Don’t be Important (55.8%) and Don’t be a Child (49.6%), while that showed lower were Don’t Belong (5.3%) and Don’t be well (5%). Health Behaviour was assessed by 5 point Likert Scale on 5 domains – Physical, Mental, Emotional, Food and Hygiene, and Risk behaviour. Composite scores were calculated and Health Behaviour was categorized as Poor, Moderate and Good health. Among all, Physical health was found to be the most affected domain with 25% falling in poor category. Risk Behaviour was found to be very low with only 2.2 % falling in the high risk category. Don’t be close, Don’t make it and Don’t be Sane injunctions showed significant negative association with all the domains of health behaviour. Emotional Health and Mental Health domains had significant association with all 12 Injunctions.