| The purpose of this research was to examine the relationship of adolescent health behavior to future time perspective, self-esteem, and the demographic characteristics of gender, race, age, grade in school, socioeconomic status, and religion. The health promotion model was used as the organizing framework. Four instruments were used to measure the variables: the Teen Wellness Check measured health behavior, the dependent variable; the Coopersmith Self-esteem Inventory; the Future Time Perspective Inventory; and a short questionnaire eliciting information about religion, church attendance, and parents' education and occupation. In addition, parent questionnaires were completed by 18 parents to compare their responses on selected health behavior items with their adolescents' responses.; A sample of 303 adolescents were surveyed from three different high schools in one public city school system in the Southeastern United States. The majority (64.4%) of the sample was in middle adolescence, 15 and 16 years old and in the 9th grade (69.6%). More than half were female (59.7%). The adolescents were predominantly Black (95.7%) and came from families where the mothers (92.6%) and fathers (89.9%) had a high school education or less. Two hundred sixty-one subjects (86.7%) identified themselves as Protestants and 194 (64.7%) said they attended a church once a week or more.; Multiple regression analyses resulted in three variables being mildly predictive (17.9% of the variance at p {dollar}leq{dollar}.05) of positive health behavior: high self-esteem, church attendance weekly or more often, and a father with less than a high school education. Self-esteem accounted for over one third (38.1%) of the variance. A longer future time perspective, although weakly correlated (r = {dollar}-{dollar}0.19), was not predictive of positive health behavior.; Future recommendations include expanding the research to include a more heterogeneous sample, adolescents in each developmental category, and adolescents from a variety of identified family constellations.; Another recommendation is to continue to evaluate instrumentation to gather data about the multiple factors that influence adolescent health behavior. |
