The relationship between selected developmental assets and health-promoting behaviours of adolescents in Southern Taiwan

Abstract

Aims and objectives: To examine the relationship between selected developmental assets and health-promoting behaviours of adolescents.

Background: Developmental assets can be considered as potential health assets for adolescents. Understanding the relationship between developmental assets and health-promoting behaviours among adolescents could provide nurses with a new approach to design intervention programmes for adolescent health-promoting behaviours.

Design: A cross-sectional study design.

Methods: Anonymous questionnaires were administered to 453 adolescents aged between 13-16 years. Canonical correlation analysis was used to examine the relationship between selected developmental assets and health-promoting behaviours.

Results: Canonical correlation analysis indicated two significantly meaningful variate pairs between selected developmental assets and health-promoting behaviour sets. The first pair variate accounted for 51.3% of the total variance, which showed that adolescents who had better self-esteem, future aspirations, responsible choices, family communication, non-parental adult role models, peer role models and community involvement had better behaviours of life appreciation, health responsibility, social support, stress management, nutrition and exercise. The second pair variate accounted for 9.6% of the total variance, which showed that adolescents who had better responsible choices had better stress management behaviours.

Conclusion: Developmental assets are important to adolescents' health-promoting behaviours. Interventions focusing on strengthening developmental assets can potentially provide an innovative approach for nurses to improve health-promoting behaviours of adolescents.

Relevance to clinical practice: Strengthening developmental assets can potentially improve the health-promoting behaviours of adolescents. Individual and sociopolitical domains should be incorporated into programmes for enhancement of developmental assets. School nurses can cooperate with family and community and provide environments improving adolescents' developmental assets. Nurses should actively engage in developmental asset programmes for adolescents. The tools for measuring developmental assets modified and developed in this study were valid and reliable. They can be used for further examination of the developmental assets for adolescents in various subset populations.