Joanna Siminska

Assessment of health behaviour of school-age youth

I n t r o d u c t i o n . Adolescence is a very important period for young people as it is the time when the patterns of health behaviour stabilize and in such form may be adopted for the rest of one’s life. This age group is also most prone to behaviour posing a risk to health and lacking behaviour good for health. The period of education is the most suitable to make teenagers aware of how much depends on themselves. Adolescence is often the time of rebellion and independent decision making which influence both the diet, way of spending fee time, personal and mental hygiene as well as abusing dangerous substance. The aim of the study was to assess the health behaviour of lower secondary school attendees in the scope of diet and physical activity by means of a questionnaire. The materials were based on research regarding health behaviour. The study group consisted of 90 students (60% male, 40% female). A questionnaire was chosen as the study method. The study was performed in 2012, from May until September. The results were comparable with HBSC results from 2006 in which 64.4% of the adolescents did not achieve the recommended physical activity minimum. The research has shown that adolescents prefer passive ways of spending their free time. Studies which monitor the state of behaviour linked with the health of the youth are carried out both internationally, nationally and locally. Poland achieves poor results in comparison to other countries when it comes to level of physical activity and amount of time spent on passive leisure.