ABSTRACT
Health control beliefs account for one of the most important indicators of health beliefs for planning health educational programs. It's also known as a main structure in understanding and predicting health behaviors. In addition, health control beliefs are predictor of health behaviors. Thus, they play a basic role in the pregnancy period. This study was conducted to assess the relationship between health controls beliefs and life style in the pregnancy period. This cross-sectional analytical study was conducted at Gonabad University of Medical Sciences in 2008. The samples were 115 pregnant women referring to therapeutic- health centers of Gonabad, Iran, that were selected by simple random sampling. Measurement tools were consisted of three questionnaires: personal information inventory, multi-dimensional scale of health control beliefs and life styles questionnaire in pregnancy period. The collected data were analyzed using One-way ANOVA by the SPSS software. The mean age and pregnancy age of the samples were 20 +/- .27 year's and 23 +/- .6 weeks respectively. 83.5 percent of the women were householders, 41.7 percent had diploma and 54.8 percent were experiencing their first pregnancy. The highest scores of health control belief scale were related to internal belief, effective person belief and chance belief dimensions respectively. In addition, statistical analysis showed significant relationship between dimension of internal belief of health control and dimensions of nutrition and safety from life style in pregnancy period. The present study showed that health internal control belief is higher, in comparison to other two criteria, in pregnant women of Gonabad. However, thinking based health internal control belief is higher, in comparison to other two criteria, in pregnant women of Gonabad. However, thinking based health control beliefs, especially internal health control beliefs, can be strengthened by using appropriate teaching methods in pregnant women, as part of high risk group