The relationship between nursing students' health perceptions and health-seeking behaviors

Abstract

Examine the effect of health perception on the health-seeking behaviors of nursing students. This descriptive-correlational study was made with a sample of 314 undergraduate nursing students. The Personal Introduction Form, Health Perception Scale, and Health-Seeking Behavior Scale were used to gather data. Kolmogorov Smirnov normality testing and Q-Q graphs were used to evaluate the data's normal distribution. Descriptive statistics, independent group t-tests, one-way variance (ANOVA), Kruskal-Wallis, and Pearson Correlation analysis were used. Additionally, the Dunn-Bonferroni and Tukey tests were used. According to the students' overall health status, between the mean Accuracy sub-dimension scores, a significant difference was found (p<0.05). According to the students' overall health status, the mean scores for self-awareness and general health perception were significant (p< 0.05). According to the students' overall health status, the mean scores for the sub-dimensions of professional health-seeking behavior were significant (p<0.05). According to the students' initial actions when they or a member of their family became ill, between the mean scores of the self-awareness behavior sub-dimension there was a significant difference (p<0.05). According to the student's initial response when they became ill, the difference between the mean scores of the sub-dimension of online health-seeking behavior was found to be statistically significant (p<0.05). According to the students' first response when they became ill, it was discovered that there was a significant difference between the mean scores of the conventional health-seeking behavior sub-dimension (p<0.05). There was a weak positive correlation between the mean scores of the Health Perception Scale and the Health-Seeking Behaviour Scale and the level of health-seeking behavior increased as the health perception of the students increased. In this direction, it was seen that students' health perception was effective in health-seeking behaviors.