From the viewpoint of the public, academic work is relatively autonomous, stable, and stress-free as opposed to other professions. However, as the societal environment evolves, high satisfaction is no more an absolute consequence of academic work. Even in comparison to other professionals, the academics experienced longer working hours and heavier occupational stress; hence the events of ¡§Karoshi¡¨ among university academics happened from time to time. Actually, the reason resulting in ¡§Karoshi¡¨ has been proved related to health behavior, and the health behavior also has been proved associated with health belief. Following this concept, a study based upon ¡§health belief model¡¨ was carried out to investigate the health belief, health behavior, and health status of university academics, respectively, and the possible relationships among the aforementioned health related concepts.
In total, 4,000 subjects were selected from among the 43,050 or so university academics nationwide based on stratified sampling approach. Data were collected through survey questionnaires which include personal demographics, health belief, health behavior, and health status information. From June through August 2004, 1,778 questionnaires returned with a response rate of 44.45%. SPSS was used for descriptive analysis and basic hypothesis test, and then the software package AMOS was used for structural equation modeling examination.
Compared to the general population with the same age, the health status of university academics was worse in both physical and psychological function. Further, it was found that the factor work significantly contributed to each component of health belief (i.e. perceived susceptibility, perceived seriousness, perceived barriers, and perceived benefits). In terms of health behavior, although the academics had no unhealthy habits (i.e. smoking or excessive drinking), the average working hour after 10 pm was more than one hour and one in three teachers didn¡¦t take exercise regularly, which altogether are definitely harmful to health. The structural equation modeling showed that an academic¡¦s health belief would influence his/her health behavior and then influence the health status indirectly. In other words, positive health belief will lead to healthy status in the long run, and negative health belief will conduce to unhealthy status.
To sum up, the issue on improving the health status of academics is on edge and the responsibility for taking this issue would be shouldered by teamwork¡X individuals, educational authorities, and public health agencies. An academic should try his/her best to improve the health; the educational authorities should assess the job loading on academic population from time to time and draw up a better educational system; and finally, the public health agency should play the role of information disseminator and catalyst for strengthening the health belief and then improving the health behavior and health status among the academics.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0125105-162009 |
| Date | 25 January 2005 |
| Creators | Shih, Wen-wen |
| Contributors | Jin-yuan Chern, none, none, none |
| Publisher | NSYSU |
| Source Sets | NSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Language | Cholon |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0125105-162009 |
| Rights | withheld, Copyright information available at source archive |
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