Gender Differences on Osteoporosis Health Beliefs

Authors: YinPing Zhang RuYi Xia Bei Zhang Feng Zhang XinShuang Zhao LuLu Zhang Hao Li

Publish Date: 2014/01/08

Volume: 39, Issue: 3, Pages: 545-551

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Abstract

Osteoporosis represents the major public health concern worldwide The purpose of this study was to assess osteoporosis beliefs and actual performance of osteoporosis preventive behaviors in nonacademic community Chinese population and to explore whether the differences exist in community females and males A cross sectional study including 137 females and 122 males was conducted in four nonacademic communities of Xi’an city during November 2012 selected by multistage sampling method Selfadministered questionnaire was used for data collection The respondents’ mean age was 5606 ± 581 years 355  of the participants had a bone mineral density test The participants exhibit relatively low osteoporosis health beliefs The total health belief score was 6330 ± 855 and 6413 ± 647 in females and males respectively There was significant gender differences in the subscales of Perceived seriousness p = 003 Perceived barriers to exercise p = 0004 and Perceived motivation p = 001 Participants had low frequencies of preventive practices Gender differences were revealed in current smoking and alcohol intake soybean food intake smoking history p  0001 alcohol intake history p = 0001 meat or egg intake p = 0019 The findings from the study suggest an increased awareness of this major public health problem in nonacademic Chinese and the scope for enhancing osteoporosis intervention considering the gender differenceInvestigators of this work were partially supported by grants from Shaanxi Province Science and Technology Foundation 2010K1601 National Natural Science Foundation of China 81100628 We thank all the study participants for volunteering to participate in the study

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