Wellness is a multifaceted, active process of growth to reach one’s full potential. It includes avoiding risk factors that can harm people, such as smoking and excessive alcohol consumption; focusing on nutrition, exercise, and spiritual practices; and embracing nature.
This study reveals that health consciousness influences home-based exercise during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also shows that health life goal and perceived behavioral control mediate the relationship between health consciousness and home-based exercise.
Definition
Wellness is a process of actively pursuing activities and choices that lead to optimal health and vitality. It encompasses many dimensions that include physical, emotional/ mental, intellectual, spiritual, interpersonal and environmental wellness.
For example, a person practicing physical wellness would focus on eating healthy and exercising regularly. They might also avoid risky behaviors like smoking, excessive drinking and unprotected sex that could cause cancer, heart disease and infections.
Emotional/mental wellness involves a person’s sense of wellbeing, self-esteem and ability to cope with daily stressors. They may also engage in spiritual activities that support their values and beliefs. Interpersonal and social wellness is a sense of belonging and support from others, having satisfying relationships and being able to communicate effectively. Intellectual wellness encourages participation in mentally stimulating activities, a love of learning and curiosity. Lastly, environmental wellness is being aware of the environment and taking steps to protect it. Examples of this include recycling, reducing waste, not polluting the air and water, and enjoying nature.
Measurement
Scholars have approached the concept of health consciousness in different ways. In general, they have found that individuals who are more health conscious tend to be engaged in healthy behaviors, consistently pay attention to their own health conditions, seek and use health information from multiple sources, take responsibility for their own health, and are motivated to stay healthy.
Most previous research has directly measured actual health behaviors, such as food consumption and exercise habits or substance use. However, such measures are limited in their ability to explain diverse health behaviors. By measuring the underlying psychological traits of health consciousness, researchers can more comprehensively explore its influence on health behaviors.
Recently, scholars have developed a new scale to measure the health consciousness of college students. The scale consists of six dimensions, including autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations with others, purpose in life and self-acceptance. The scale has high psychometric properties and convergent validity. It can be used to predict various health behaviors, such as home-based exercise.
Findings
A number of studies have analyzed the relationship between critical consciousness and wellbeing. However, the majority of these studies have not focused on specific constructs within critical consciousness, such as cognitive empowerment or low system justification beliefs. Adding these dimensions into the conceptualization of critical consciousness could allow for a more robust examination of links to wellbeing.
In one study, students with high levels of EI were found to engage in more health-related behaviors than those who had lower EI. The authors attributed this result to the fact that those with higher health consciousness were more likely to endorse health-related goals and believe they had control over their actions.
In addition, the researchers found that health consciousness directly affects home-based exercise. Moreover, health consciousness also indirectly affects home-based exercise through the mediation of health life goal and perceived behavioral control. Therefore, it is important to make people aware of the benefits of exercising. This way, more people will be encouraged to perform physical activities at home.
Conclusions
Wellness is a multidimensional concept that includes physical health, mental health, and spiritual well-being. It also encompasses the social, environmental, and cultural dimensions of life. Wellness promotes a healthy lifestyle and includes good nutrition, exercise, rest, and self-esteem. It focuses on the whole person and their personal strengths rather than their weaknesses. It is a broader, more holistic approach to health promotion than the medical model.
This study analyzed the relationship between home-based exercise during the COVID-19 pandemic and wellness consciousness by using Structural Equation Modelling. The results showed that wellness consciousness has a positive effect on home-based exercise. In addition, it indirectly influences home-based exercise through health life goal and perceived behavioral control. Therefore, it is important for people to create favorable conditions to maintain their health behaviors. In particular, they should pay attention to the setting of their health life goals and improve their perceived behavioral control. This will ensure that they can keep up with their exercise habits during the COVID-19 pandemic.
