Participation in health-promoting behaviour: influences on community-dwelling older Chinese people.

AIM: This paper reports a study to determine the factors affecting community-dwelling older Chinese people's health-promoting behaviour in the domains of physical activity, healthy dietary practices and stress management, and to identify any barriers to these behaviours.

BACKGROUND: Previous studies have identified factors affecting different types of health-promoting behaviours, including perceived self-efficacy, perceived benefits and five individual characteristics (age, sex, marital status, education and perceived health) of older non-Chinese people. However, few studies have simultaneously taken these factors into account in examining community-dwelling Chinese older people's health-promoting behaviour.

METHOD: Individual face-to-face interviews were completed in 2002-2003 with a convenience sample of 896 community-dwelling older Chinese people in Hong Kong aged between the ages of 60 and 98 (years mean 76). Participants had no apparent communication and cognition impairments. A structured interview schedule was used to collect the data.

RESULTS: Multiple regression analysis showed that perceived self-efficacy, perceived benefits and sex together explained 38.4% of health-promoting behaviour among community-dwelling older Chinese people in Hong Kong. Fatigue during and after physical activity, enjoyment of unhealthy foods and inadequate family and peer support were the most frequently reported barriers to health-promoting behaviour.

CONCLUSION: When developing health promotion programmes to motivate community-dwelling older Chinese clients to participate in health-promoting behaviour and to minimize barriers, community nurses should include some activities to increase both the perceived self-efficacy and perceived benefits of health-promoting behaviour. Future studies should include more critical factors based on theories, empirical evidence and knowledge of culture with samples that are random and from more diverse community settings.