A preliminary study of health conceptions among married women

The purpose of this study is to assess the consistency of the dimensions of health identified in the study with Smith's four models of the meaning of health perception and to determine the variation in health conceptions as related to women's age, education, employment status and self-rated health status. A convenience sampling was used in this study that included 86 married women between the ages of 24 and 50, with a mean age of 33 years (SD = +/- 6.1). Of 86 women, 58 were from the Kaohsiung Medical College Hospital, and 28 were from Ma Ma Yuan Di, a women's self-developing club. Interviewing, performed by two research assistants, took place in the women's homes. The findings indicate that the most frequently mentioned women's concepts of health support Smith's clinical model (73.3% of the 86 women). The eudaemonistic model, which includes the practicing of healthy lifestyles, was the second most frequently mentioned concepts of health (53.5%). The other two models, role-function and adaptive, were seldom mentioned by the women (12.8% and 4.7% respectively). The conceptions of health were divided into two groups. The negative group includes clinical and role-function models, and the positive group includes adaptive and eudaemonistic models. No significant association was found between health conceptions and age, education, employment status and self-rated health status through Chi-Square analysis.