MATERIALS AND METHODS
The present research is a descriptive‐analytical study of cross‐sectional type aiming to determine effective factors on health promotion behaviors in the elderly people in the Dena province. The participants in this study include 120 elderly people who had their residence in Dena Province, were able to communicate and who had no serious health problem. The simple random sampling was used to select the elderly from family profiles in health care centers who had a 65 and over age member. About half of the participants were male and the rest were female and after attracting their trust, we interviewed than and completed the relevant questionnaire. The collection of data was by face‐to‐face interview, but in essential cases the interviews were done on telephone calls together with the in‐person interview. Such that if a person was not present at home or did not have the time for the interview, some parts of the interview (demographic specifications) were done by his house or from other people in his family and the rest of the interview for filling out the questionnaire used to be done by a telephone call by getting the person`s telephone number. The time for filling a questionnaire was 30 to 45 min. On average and the total duration for completing all the questionnaires was 2 months. Since the population had over years of age and the number of questions were rather too many, we used two sessions, at times to complete the questionnaires. Finally, the data was analyzed by SPSS software version 20 and statistical tests consisting of, descriptive statistics, t‐test, Spearman’s Correlation, and Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient. The criterion for statistical significance was P < 05.
Health Promotion Lifestyle Profile 2 (HPLP2) was used for measuring the health promotion behaviors. This questionnaire was provided according to Pender health promotion model, to measure the rate at which people perform health promotion behaviors. This questionnaire has been adapted from walker et al. tools. Alpha‐Cronbach coefficient reported by walker et al. was 94%.[16] The primary scale of this questionnaire includes 48 items that measures health promotion behaviors in different dimensions: Nutrition, physical activity, responsibility for health, stress management, inter‐personal support and self actualization. The tools were reconsidered in 1995. The modified tools consisted of 52 items that measures health promotion behaviors in 6 different dimensions: Responsibility for health, physical activity, nutrition, prevention, inter‐personal relations and stress management.[17] We used the validity measuring questionnaire of Anahita Babak by reported alpha‐Cronbach coefficient 75%.[18] By giving suitable scores to each question in the 6 dimensions of health promotion, the total lifestyle score was determined. In this case, the score of “1” was given to the answer that showed the most inappropriate level of lifestyle, and the increasing appropriation obtained the scores of 2, 3, 4 and 5, respectively. To calculate the score of each dimension forhealthy life, the total obtained score was considered from the question related to the same dimension. To calculate the total score of healthy lifestyle, the total of different dimensions was calculated. Since 3 levels (inappropriate, intermediate and proper) were considered. Categorization was done as follows: Score of 42‐98 as inappropriate healthy lifestyle, 99‐155 as intermediate healthy lifestyle and 156‐211 as proper healthy lifestyle.