Behaviours of adolescents towards safety measures at school and in traffic and their health beliefs for injuries

Abstract

AIM: The aim of this work is to determine the behaviours of adolescents towards safety measures at school and in traffic and their health beliefs for injuries. BACKGROUND: Adolescents are more prone to injuries, as they are more willing to try risky health behaviours. METHODS: This descriptive and cross-sectional study was conducted at high schools in Turkey. The data were collected from high school students based on the self-report method between October 2017 and January 2018. Frequency, percentage, chi-square, t test, and logistic regression were used to analyse the data. RESULTS: A total of 481 adolescents participated in the study. The response rate is 96.05%. As a result of the research, 12.5% of the adolescents reported that they were injured in traffic and 18.9% of them were injured at school. Adolescents who did not have an accident had higher scores of health beliefs than those who had an accident (p < 0.05). The most important predictors of injury are being male (OR: 2.52, 95% CI [1.19, 53.00]), parents' separation (OR: 2.82, 95% CI [0.98, 8.09]), and not believing that traffic rules were safe (OR: 3.15, 95% CI [1.42, 6.97]). CONCLUSION: Adolescents have risky behaviours at school and in traffic, and these risk behaviours are related to demographic characteristics and health beliefs. School nurses should plan health belief model-based injury prevention programs.