Exploration of the factors influencing health-risk behaviours among school adolescents: A mixed method approach

Health-risk behaviours can have adversarial impacts on wellbeing of the adolescents. Preventing the advancement of such behaviours is less complex than turning around in adulthood. The study was conducted to explore factors influencing health-risk behaviours among school adolescents. The explanatory design-participant selection approach begun with the collection of quantitative data, followed by the collection of the qualitative data to describe and enrich the quantitative results. The majority of the school adolescents have moderate health-risk behaviours with regard to personal hygiene (83.9%), eating habits (77%), physical activities (72.1%), social media addiction (73%) and psychosocial problems (68.5%). Multiple factors influence the health risk behaviours in adolescence and they are reciprocally interrelated and hence they cannot be viewed independently. Continuous behavioural changes in communication programs are needed to lift up the healthy practices among school going adolescents.