Introduction
The article by Sousa, Gaspar, Vaz, Gonzaga, and Dixe (2015) describes a psychometrical test of the European version of the Health-Promoting Lifestyle Profile-II, also known as the Portuguese Version. The purpose was to measure health-promoting behaviors based on the recognition that individual lifestyles are shaped to a certain extent as health constructs. The study’s background and theoretical framework were affected by the Pender’s health promotion model. Discussing the research methods employed by the article’s authors and their findings will help link their scholarly pursuit to the Pender’s health promotion model and highlight the importance and relevance of the latter to modern-day research in the area of health and medicine
Analysis
The research methods employed by the study included examining the Health-Promoting Lifestyle Profile-II scale for the purpose of its linguistic and cultural adaptation with subsequent application of the scale to 889 participants. The scale served as the study’s primary instrument, as it was expected to measure health-promoting behaviors regarded as a complex pattern of deliberate actions and personal perceptions aimed at sustaining or increasing the level of well-being, accomplishment, and life satisfaction. The goal was to assess their psychometric characteristics and perform confirmatory factor analysis. The convenience-based type of sampling was used: eligible participants received online questionnaires, and their responses constituted the collected data. Eligibility was based on three factors: registration, nationality, and age. Participants had to be registered with a Portuguese polytechnic institute (as students, teachers, or staff members), hold Portuguese nationality, and being over 18 years old.
Results showed that the Portuguese Version is valid and reliable in terms of easiness of understanding and reflecting the attitudes and practices of the participants. This indicated that the employed instrument can be used further for evaluating health-promoting lifestyles. Also, since the scale measures not only actions but also perceptions, it can be used for assessing the effectiveness of health-promoting campaigns and educational programs. From this perspective, another implication of the study is its possible use in identifying the health promotion-related needs of populations and addressing those needs effectively.
When discussing the background of the study, Sousa et al. (2015) turn to various health behaviors measurement tools and models, one of which is the model developed by Nola Pender. The influence of this model on the studied field is acknowledged. Pender (1996) suggested that behaviors aimed at health protection and those aimed at health promotion together constitute what should be addressed from the scholarly perspective as healthy lifestyles. Health protection includes stabilization and human conservation, i.e. the effort to decrease the risks of having a disease. Health promotion includes updating and contributing to maintaining or increasing the perceived level of well-being, accomplishments, and satisfaction. The authors stress that the instrument used for the study is largely based on the model initially proposed by Pender.
Conclusion
The tool that Sousa et al. (2015) used in the given study relies to a significant extent on the understanding of healthy lifestyles shaped by the model proposed by Pender (1996). Upon testing participants for their deliberate actions and personal perceptions of health promotion, authors were able to not only assess healthy lifestyles in a given population but also create a perspective where health promotion needs could be identified and addressed. The achievement is based on Pender’s model as it specifies the differences between health protection and health promotion and explains how both should be measured toward a reliable understanding of healthy lifestyles.
References
Pender, N. (1996). Health promotion in nursing practice. Norwalk, CT: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Sousa, P., Gaspar, P., Vaz, D. C., Gonzaga, S., & Dixe, M. A. (2015). Measuring health-promoting behaviors: Cross-cultural validation of the Health-Promoting Lifestyle Profile-II. International Journal of Nursing Knowledge, 26(2), 54-61.