RESEARCH ARTICLE
Relations between Health Perception and Physical Self-Concept in Adolescents
Pedro Cantero Castrillo1, M de los Ángeles Fernández Villarino2, M Belén Toja Reboredo1, Miguel Ángel González Valeiro1, *
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2020Volume: 13
First Page: 137
Last Page: 145
Publisher ID: TOSSJ-13-137
DOI: 10.2174/1875399X02013010137
Article History:
Received Date: 8/9/2020Revision Received Date: 14/10/2020
Acceptance Date: 17/10/2020
Electronic publication date: 31/12/2020
Collection year: 2020
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background:
Self-rated health is influenced by personal characteristics, such as gender and age. Similarly, it seems that physical self-concept can influence this perception, being positively related to healthy habits and quality of life. Adolescence is a sensitive stage in establishing the physical self-concept as well as in health-related behaviours. Therefore, it is necessary to study these relationships since the behaviours established at these ages will have a lasting impact on life.
Objective:
The aim of this study was to analyse the relation between physical self-concept and self-rated health in adolescents.
Methods:
A sample of 1697 adolescents (824 boys; 48.5% and 873 girls; 51.5%), aged between 12 and 16 years old (14.2 ±1.0) participated in the study. For data collection, a questionnaire was used. The measured variables were perception of health, physical self-concept and gender. A chi-square test was used to analyse the data and evaluate the association between the variables, and Cramer´s V was used to quantify the degree of association. A Classification and Regression Tree (CART) evaluation was applied to discover the influence of the variables that have an effect on the perception of health.
Results:
The results show that boys perceive to have better health and greater physical self-concept than girls. Similarly, a positive relationship has been found between the health´s perception in both genders and the physical self-concept, in each of its subdomains.
Conclusion:
A positive relationship has been found between health perception and physical self-concept. Therefore, an increase in the physical self-concept is presented as an opportunity to improve health self-perception, which can positively affect the health of young people.