Spirituality as Protective Factor of Health Risk Behaviors among Adolescents

Abstract

Health behaviours are the behaviours that are practised by people for the enhancement and maintenance of their health. These behaviours are common in all age groups, but adolescence, as the most vulnerable age, has a higher proclivity to engage in risky behavior. Among the protective factors, increasing research in the area documents that spirituality and spiritual practises serve as the protective agent for health-risk behaviors. The present study makes an attempt to explore spirituality as a protective factor against health-risk behaviours among adolescents. The study aims to see the relationship between the two facets of spirituality, namely, spiritual intelligence and spiritual personality, with respect to health risk behaviours among adolescents. The sample comprised of 600 adolescents from various colleges and universities in the state of Haryana, India. The Spiritual Intelligence Self-Report Inventory (SISRI) by King (2008), the Spiritual Personality Inventory by Husain et al. (2012), and the Revised Health Risk Behavior Inventory by Irish (2012) were used. The descriptive statistics and Pearson’s product moment coefficient of correlation were applied to explore the relationship among the variables, and simple linear correlation was applied to look for the effect size of the variables. The study’s findings show a significant negative correlation between spirituality and health risk behavior, and spiritual intelligence and spiritual personality both appear to be significant protective factors against health risk behaviours in adolescents. The findings suggest the cultivation and nurturance of spiritual beliefs and spiritual practises in individuals right from the early age of life span for the prevention of health risk behaviours during adolescence.