The Relationship of Adolescents’ Health-Promoting

Behaviors and Social Connectedness with Family

Communication and Family Satisfaction

Marlene Tovar, MA, BSN, RN

Lynn Rew, EdD, RN, AHN-BC, FAAN

School of Nursing, The University of Texas at Austin

BACKGROUND AND

PUBACKGROUND AND

PURPOSE

RPOSE Unhealthy lifestyle behaviors in adolescence become major

contributors of disability, morbidity and mortality in adulthood.

Physical activity (PA), adequate sleep & healthy breakfasts are the

Health-promoting behaviors (HPBs) under examination.

Adolescents’ connectedness,

Family Communication & Family Satisfaction.

The relationships of family influences, connectedness, and HPBs are

unclear. The purpose was to unravel the relationships in between.

Design and Methods• Design: cross-sectional & non-experimental.

• Data Source: the pre-intervention phase of a feasibility study

• Variables: Adolescents (1) social connectedness, (2) sleep [8 hours], (3) daily physical activity), (4) eating healthy breakfasts daily, (5) having access to a computer at home; parents (6) family communication and (7) family satisfaction.

• The analysis included: HPB prevalence, bivariate analysis and correlations.

• The sample: 28 adolescents (mean age 13 ± 1.34), 57% were middle school students, 21% males, 25% Blacks, 50% Whites, 25% “other;” included 50% Hispanics.

• Parents (mean age 43 ±6.9) included 6 legal guardians, 96% female, 21% single, 43% had not completed a high school education or GED.

• Only 61% (n=17) of adolescents reported access to a computer at home; 25% (n=7) were Hispanic. Broken down by race , the sample reported

71% (n=12) White, 12% (n=2) Black , and 17% (n = 3) “other.”

Table of Scales

Health-Promoting Behaviors (HPBs) Prevalence

Table of Correlations

**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

*. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

Discussion & conclusions

Small study to evaluate feasibility of a brief SPORT © intervention.

Statistical power for a large effect, not for lesser effects.

Family communication & social connectedness (ρ = .058).

Relationships (p < .05) between family communication and family satisfaction; daily healthy breakfast and family satisfaction; adequate sleep and daily healthy breakfast.

Access to home computers (<2/3 of our participant households) was positively associated with physical activity.

Findings warrant further research with larger samples of adolescents.

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