Abstract

GONZALEZ, Barbara  and  RIBEIRO, J. Pais. Health behaviours and personality dimensions in young college students. Psic., Saúde & Doenças [online]. 2004, vol.5, n.1, pp.107-127. ISSN 1645-0086.

The purpose of this study was to inspect the relationship between health behaviours and personality dimensions in female Psychology college students, of a Lisbon University. Participants were 270 female students, age 18-30 (M=21,69; SD=2,11). We measured health behaviours with Health Behaviour Questionnair (Ribeiro, 1993) and personality dimensions with NEO Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO-PI-R; Costa & McCrae, 1992). Correlation between health behaviours, and between health behaviours and personality dimensions, shows statistically significant but low and very low correlations, suggesting that the relation between these two is not strong. T test for mean differences shows a statistically significant difference between the two age groups (18-21 e 22-30), t(270)=-2,11, p<0,03, for facet 5 (Ideas) of Overture to Experience dimension, being higher in the second group, what, in what comes to the global dimension, is not congruent with literature. Some other results were not congruent with the literature, suggesting that the sample of this study has some particularities to be investigated. Overall, the results seem to show that personality dimensions are weak predictors of health behaviours, relating to the fact that personality dimensions accounts for only a small proportion of the variance in the health practices index, which is a commom finding when general psychological factors, rather than socio-cognitive factors related to specific activities, are assessed.

Keywords : Health behaviours; Personality dimensions.

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