This study aims to explore the relationship between housewives’ health KAP level and the physical health of families. The data used in this study are obtained from the Last Evaluation Program of the National Note for Health surveyed in July, 1989. The respondents for this study are 770 housewives residing in Chunan and Buan. The reason why this study focus on KAP level of housewives is to find out whether a housewife as a emotional supporter contributes to the physical health of her families. A housewife gives her families emotional satisfaction insteade of economic satisfaction. So she has the most interest in family health among the members of her family. Therefore, housewife’ s KAP level will influence her family health. The independent variables chosen for the analysis are the general characteristic variables and KAP level. And the dependent variable is the physical health of families which excluded psychosocial one. This level of family health includes weight for family health and seriouseness of disease.
The result of this study was summarized as follows.
(1) KAP level was significantly correlated with variables which have mainly the socioeconomic characteristics. The variables were area of residence, education level occupation, self assessment on wealth, and exposure to mass communication
(2) In the analysis of relationship between the general characteristic variables and family health, family health was significantly correlated with almost all variables. The variables were Presence of the aged, Health status, Experience in disease, Self assessment on health, No. of families, Occupation, Education level, Self assessment on wealth, Concern on health, and Exposure to mass communication.
(3) In the analysis of relationship between family health and KAP level, family health was not significantly correlated with KAP level but.
(4) Also in the stepwise regression analysis, the general variables account for about 32.1 percent of the variance in the dependent variable, family health. The variable with the greatest explanatory power was presence of the aged. On the contrary, KAP level explain about 0.4 percent of the variance in the dependent variable.
In sum, the study shows that housewives’ health KAP level has relatively weak relationship with the physical health of families.
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