Factors that affect healthy lifestyle behaviors of high school students in Turkey: A systematic review

Abstract

This systemic review aimed to reveal factors that affect the healthy lifestyle behaviors of high school students. The Healthy Lifestyle Behaviors Scale (HLBS), whose first version (comprising 48 items) was developed by Walker in 1987, was revised in 1996 and named as HLBS II. Articles, searched using the databases of PubMed, ScienceDirect, CINAHL, EBSCOhost, Medline, Google Scholar, and National Thesis Center between March and April 2015, were included in this review. Various combinations of keywords such as “healthy lifestyle behaviors, healthy lifestyle behaviors scale, high school, adolescent” for the Turkish databases and “healthy lifestyle behavior, healthy lifestyle behaviors scale, Turkey, high school, adolescent” for the foreign databases were used. Eleven articles that met the selection criteria were included in the study. In the evaluation of the data, the general characteristics of the studies, mean scores obtained from subscales of the HLBS, and the distribution of the affecting factors were made. It was determined that high school students generally had moderate scores of the HLBS. The total scores of the HLBS I were between 113.0±17.0 and 126.6±20.3 and those of the HLBS II were between 126.3±18.2 and 129.5±21.9. Among the sociodemographic characteristics, male individuals who lived in a village for a long time, had good general health perceptions, high parental education, good income status, good family relationships, had a nuclear family, social security, employed parents, performed exercise, and participated in social activities had positive effects on healthy lifestyle behaviors. Thus, establishing intervention programs by considering factors that affect healthy lifestyle behaviors was important for planning health promotion programs.