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).

Untitled

“…Interesting phenomena, regarding possible future development of such study lies in comparing subjective and objective indicators of health. Self-reported estimation of some health indices could be compared to objective, tested by fitness test evaluation (Dobosz, 2018). In mentioned study, males results was not statistically significant, while newer study of same phenomena about female athletes shown significant correlation between subjective and objective measurements (Dobosz, 2019).This is concurrent with our obtained results, where females results have higher correlation between self-reported general indicator and more objective detailed evaluation.…”

“…Self-reported estimation of some health indices could be compared to objective, tested by fitness test evaluation (Dobosz, 2018). In mentioned study, males results was not statistically significant, while newer study of same phenomena about female athletes shown significant correlation between subjective and objective measurements (Dobosz, 2019).This is concurrent with our obtained results, where females results have higher correlation between self-reported general indicator and more objective detailed evaluation. In light of the results acquired, it would seem to be even more justifiable to continue research on the subject of the circumstances of shaping the responsibility for undertaking behavioural traits that have an impact on health.…”