Educational intervention for promoting stretching exercise behavior among a sample of Iranian office employees: applying the Health Promotion Model

• Published in: Journal of pain research Vol. 12; pp. 733 - 742
• Main Authors: Delshad, Mohammad Hossein, Tavafian, Sedigheh Sadat, Kazemnejad, Anoshirvan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New Zealand Dove Medical Press Limited 01.01.2019; Dove Medical Press
• Subjects: Analysis; Behavior; Educational intervention; Health Promotion Model; Office employees; Office workers; Original Research; Physical fitness; Stretching Exercises; Iran; educational intervention; stretching exercises; office employees; Health Promotion Model
• DOI: 10.2147/JPR.S183410
• ISSN: 1178-7090

Health Promotion Model (HPM) is one comprehensive model by which health behavior predicting factors could be determined. This study aimed to investigate the effects of a designed interventional program based on HPM on promoting stretching exercise (SE) behavior among office employees. This interventional designed study was carried out on 87 office employees who were working in the three health networks affiliated to Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in Tehran, Iran. These participants were randomly divided into intervention group (N=44) who complied with educational program based on HPM and control group (N=43) who did not receive the program. The data were collected through a demographic questionnaire and a researcher-made questionnaire based on HPM at three times of baseline, 3- and 6-month follow-ups and analyzed using SPSS version 19. Totally, 40 office employees with mean age of (37.70±7.40) in intervention and 37 ones with mean age of (35.97±7.34) in control group were assessed. At baseline, both groups were the same regarding the HPM constructs of perceived barriers, perceived self-efficacy, commitment to plan, and interpersonal influences ( >0.05). However, following intervention, there was a significant difference between two groups during 6-month follow-up in all these predictor factors ( <0.0001). Furthermore, the mean score of SE behavior in intervention group (22.43±6.50) was significantly better than the control group (15.45±0.93) ( <0.001). The pain severity also in intervention group (1±1.22) also was significantly less than control group (2±2.03) after 6-month follow-up ( <0.001). The SE educational programs applied in this study were effective for promoting SE among office employees.