Impact of Health Education on Health Behaviour, Health Locus of Control and Social Support

Health education as an approach of health promotion enhances positive health and prevents ill health in individuals and groups. Since the core element of health has changed from disease prevention to health protection and promotion, enhancing the psychological determinants of health is an important public health challenge. Personal and social factors have become core issues in determining the health of an individual. The present study investigates the impact of health education on Health behavior, Health locus of control & Social support among young adults. "Pre post with control" research design was adopted for this study. The sample consists of first year college students from Chennai city with the experimental group consisting of 38 students who received health education for a period of 3 months. 36 students were used as a control group. The Multidimensional health locus of control scale, Sense of support scale, and Health behaviour scale were administered. The collected data were analyzed using Analysis of Co Variance(ANCOVA). The results indicated that intervention group showed significant improvement in post and follow-up assessment on Health behavior, Sense of Support, and Internal health locus of control. This study has incorporated all the components of health promotion using physical, psychological, and social inputs into the health education.