Publication details
Pečují čeští optimisté o své zdraví aktivněji? Hlavní výstupy dekády výzkumů vztahu mezi optimismem a chováním souvisejícím se zdravím
| Title in English | Do Czech optimists care for their health more actively? Main outputs of a decade of research on the relationship between optimism and health-related behaviour |
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| Year of publication | 2016 |
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| Description | The paper focuses on the relationship between optimism/pessimism and health, health complaints and health-related behaviour. The theoretical overview is complemented by a presentation of the most significant outputs from a series of research studies which the author and her colleagues processed as a principal investigator in three consecutive projects supported by the Czech Science Foundation. The results obtained on groups of Czech respondents (N=4,501; N=1,617; N=1,252) are supplemented by a current partial study which examines the provability of a relationship between dispositional optimism and individual components of health-related behaviour in adult Czech (N=88) and American (N=88) respondents. In world professional literature, a higher degree of optimism is connected to higher activity in general as well as specifically in relation to one’s own health (Ylöstalo, 2003; Giltay, 2007; Posadzki, 2010). We have been unsuccessful in fully proving this connection among Czech respondents in any of the research projects; dispositional optimism has been repeatedly found to be in relation only the component “mental hygiene”. In American respondents, dispositional optimism also correlates strongly with “mental hygiene”, but in addition also correlates with behaviour components “healthy diet”, “substance abuse” and “prevention” These results point to a cultural dependence of the examined relations; being an optimist or pessimist in the Czech Republic does not influence care for one’s health as much. It appears dispositional and demographic characteristics serve as more significant predictors. |
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