Correlation between psychological control and health risk behaviors of college students’ parents / 中国学校卫生

ABSTRACT

Objective@#To explore the characteristics of psychological control of parents of college students and their correlation with health risk behaviors, and to provide a reference for further improving parenting styles and improving the physical and mental health of college students.@*Methods@#With the method of multi-stage stratified random sampling, 3 318 college students from 6 universities in Guizhou Province were selected. The parents’ psychological control questionnaire and Chinese adolescent health-related behavior questionnaire were used to conduct anonymous field survey.@*Results@#A total of 660 students’ parents have got low score of mental control in low-score group (<26), 1 844 in the middle group (26-49) and 814 in the high group (>49). Students who had suicide plans scored higher in the dimensions of invasion of privacy, inhibition of speech expression, and sense of disability than those who had not(t=4.08, 3.74, 3.82, P<0.01); The scores of smokers in achievement expectation, invasion of privacy and ability ineffectiveness were higher than those of non-smokers(t=7.12, 3.91, 8.10, P<0.01); the scores of drinkers in all dimensions were higher than those of non drinkers(t=9.35, 4.64, 5.90, 8.78, P<0.01); the scores of Internet addicts in all dimensions were higher than those of non-smokers(t=8.92, 14.27, 3.70, 15.94, P<0.01). Spearman correlation analysis showed that smoking, drinking and Internet addiction were positively correlated with parents’ psychological control(r=0.11, 0.15, 0.19, P<0.01).@*Conclusion@#Parents’ psychological control of college students in achievement expectation, ability ineffectiveness and speech inhibition; parents’ psychological control is positively related to smoking, drinking and Internet addiction behavior. Parents should give more active encouragement and guidance to their children and strengthen communication.