International health briefAccess to health care among Australian adolescents young people's perspectives and their sociodemographic distribution
Section snippets
Design
Quota sampling by required characteristics was used to select the high schools (see procedure below) from which school students were recruited. Purposive sampling, a form of nonprobability sampling 14, 15, was used to recruit high school students and also out-of-school young people. This study was approved by the Children's Hospital at Westmead Human Research Ethics Committee, the NSW Department of Education and Training, and the Human Ethics Committees of the Area Health Services in which
Definitions of health
Most young people defined “health” in terms of physical health. Definitions included “fitness, food, your physical state, hygiene, keeping your body in good condition…” In response to probing by the facilitator, some young people accepted the relevance of sexual and mental health being included. Those who included aspects of health other than physical well-being were all in Year 11 and of these, females were more likely to offer a broader definition of health than males. Definitions of health
Discussion
Despite most young people restricting their stated definitions of health to physical well-being, most had broad perspectives on the factors which might affect their health. When young people had a significant health concern, a great many of them did not seek help and when they did, they were more likely to seek help from those with whom they were close rather than from health professionals. However, a study conducted among adolescents in England found that the person from whom help was sought
Acknowledgements
This study was funded by a grant from the NSW Health Department to the NSW Centre for the Advancement of Adolescent Health.
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