Empirical verification of self-rated positive health (somatic dimension) in women with professional competence in the field of health education

Abstract

Purpose: to address a question whether reports of young women concerning their positive health are concordant with indices based on recommended methods of measuring health? Material: the study consist of fifteen, 23 years old female students of physiotherapy (height: QUOTE 15X"> =164.3 ±4.55; weight: QUOTE 15X"> = 60.7 ±6.76) who declared engagement in everyday or occasional physical activity. They completed The profile of the sense of positive health and survival abilities indices (SPHSA questionnaire). It includes 23 indices: 8 of somatic health (A), 4 of mental health (B), 3 of social health (C) and 8 of survival ability (D). The sense of intensity of particular indices (aspects A, B, C) is evaluated in the 1 to 5 scale where: 1 very low, 2 low, 3 average, 4 high, 5 very high. Additional index “0” (added to this five-point rating scale) is reserved to aspect D. Besides, SPHSA comprise 8 questions relating to subject’s earlier experiences associated with: safe falling, self-defence, martial arts, life-saving skills in the water, first aid, survival, uniformed services and scouting. Results: there is statistically significant correlation (r = 0.57; p<0.05) between reported and diagnosed average value of general index of somatic health of young women. Reported and diagnosed values of general index of somatic health are concordant in 5 women (33% of study group). The remaining 10 women either overestimate (n = 7) or underestimate (n = 3) their somatic health. Regardless of declared physical activity women significantly overestimated their diastolic blood pressure and underestimate their anaerobic capacity and flexibility: p<0.05 or p<0.01 (these misestimations, concerns indices having extreme values, both highest and lowest). Tendency is more evident in case of everyday active women. Conclusions: results of the experiment allow recommendation SPHSA as a useful tool to measure people’s sense of somatic health. Concurrently person’s self-evaluations can be easily verified because they concern such characteristics of the body which can be measured by quasi-objective methods (criterion validity).