Ability to Maintain and Improve Health and Socio-Demographic Correlates among Children in Albania

Attitudes toward health promotion (ability to maintain and improve health) by socio-demographic factors in a nationwide sample of schoolchildren in Albania, 2022.

Socio-demographic factor	Best attitudes (N=5534)	Poor attitudes (N=2297)	P^b
Gender:
Girls	2,987 (71.1)^a	1,217 (28.9)	0.426
Boys	2,547 (70.2)	1,080 (29.8)
Age:
12–13 years	2,755 (72.0)	1,074 (28.0)	0.015
14–15 years	2,779 (69.4)	1,223 (30.6)
Place of residence:
Urban areas	3,427 (70.8)	1,411 (29.2)	0.701
Rural areas	2,086 (70.4)	876 (29.6)
Ethnicity:
Roma/Egyptian community	116 (66.7)	58 (33.3)	0.206
Ethnic Albanian	5,188 (71.1)	2,111 (28.9)
Mother’s education:
High	2,213 (73.8)	785 (26.2)	<0.001
Middle/Low	3,299 (69.8)	1,424 (30.2)
Economic situation:
Not poor	5,234 (72.0)	2,033 (28.0)	<0.001
Poor/very poor	289 (61.1)	184 (38.9)

a Absolute numbers and their respective row percentages (in parentheses).

Discrepancies in the totals are due to the missing covariate values.

b P-values from Fisher’s exact test.

Table 2.

Attitudes toward health promotion (ability to maintain and improve health) by other dimensions of knowledge and practices regarding healthcare services.

Knowledge about and use of healthcare services	Best attitudes (N=5534)	Poor attitudes (N=2297)	P^b
Do you know your rights to healthcare services?
Yes	4,357 (79.4)^a	1,579 (72.7)	<0.001
No	1,129 (20.6)	592 (27.3)
Do you know where to receive healthcare services?
Yes	5,278 (96.0)	1,989 (91.7)	<0.001
No	220 (4.0)	179 (8.3)
Do you know the location of health facilities in your area?
Yes	4,883 (89.0)	1,841 (85.3)	<0.001
No	603 (11.0)	318 (14.7)
Do you perceive any barriers to accessing healthcare services?
No	3,216 (58.9)	1,208 (56.0)	0.022
Yes	2,241 (41.1)	948 (44.0)
Excluding the vaccination calendar, have you ever consulted/visited a health professional?			<0.001
Yes	4,121 (75.3)	1,498 (69.8)
No	1,352 (24.7)	648 (30.2)

a Absolute numbers and their respective column percentages (in parentheses).

Discrepancies in the totals are due to the missing covariate values.

b P-values from Fisher’s exact test.

Table 3.

Association of attitudes toward health promotion (ability to maintain and improve health) with the socio-demographic factors of the schoolchildren, with the results from the binary logistic regression.

Variable	Left panel: unadjusted models		Right panel: multivariable-adjusted models
Variable	OR (95%CI)	P	OR (95%CI)	P
Gender:
Girls	1.00 (reference)	0.422	1.00 (reference)	0.951
Boys	1.04 (0.94–1.15)		1.01 (0.91–1.11)
Age-group:
12–13 years	1.00 (reference)	0.015	1.00 (reference)	0.006
14–15 years	1.13 (1.02–1.24)		1.15 (1.04–1.28)
Place of residence:
Urban areas	1.00 (reference)	0.700	1.00 (reference)	0.507
Rural areas	1.02 (0.92–1.13)		0.96 (0.87–1.07)
Ethnicity:
Ethnic Albanian	1.00 (reference)	0.206	1.00 (reference)	0.273
Roma/Egyptian	1.23 (0.89–1.69)		1.20 (0.87–1.67)
Mother’s education:
High	1.00 (reference)	<0.001	1.00 (reference)	0.001
Middle/Low	1.22 (1.10–1.35)		1.19 (1.07–1.33)
Economic situation:
Not poor	1.00 (reference)	<0.001	1.00 (reference)	<0.001
Poor/very poor	1.64 (1.35–1.99)		1.54 (1.26–1.88)

Table 4.

Multivariable-adjusted association of attitudes toward health promotion (ability to maintain and improve health) with socio-demographic factors and knowledge and practices regarding healthcare services, with the results from the binary logistic regression.

Variable	OR^a	95%CI^a	P^a
Age-group:
12–13 years	1.00	reference	0.008
14–15 years	1.16	1.04–1.28
Mother’s education:
High	1.00	reference	0.001
Middle/Low	1.21	1.09–1.35
Economic situation:
Not poor	1.00	reference	<0.001
Poor/very poor	1.49	1.21–1.84
Do you know your rights to healthcare services?
Yes	1.00	reference	<0.001
No	1.31	1.15–1.49
Do you know where to receive healthcare services?
Yes	1.00	reference	<0.001
No	1.75	1.39–2.19
Excluding the vaccination calendar, have you ever consulted/visited a health professional?
Yes	1.00	reference	<0.001
No	1.24	1.09–1.40

a The table presents only the variables which were retained into the final model (Hosmer Lemeshow test for the overall goodness-of-fit of the final model: chi-square statistic=3.8, d.f.=7, P=0.803).

References

Authors

Metrics

Articles in this issue

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/sjph-2024-0016 | Journal eISSN: 1854-2476 | Journal ISSN: 0351-0026

Journal RSS Feed

Language: English, Slovenian

Page range: 113 - 122

Submitted on: Jan 26, 2024

Accepted on: Apr 23, 2024

Published on: Jun 14, 2024

Published by: National Institute of Public Health, Slovenia

In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services

Keywords:

Ability to maintain health,

Albania,

Sociodemographic factors

Related subjects:

Medicine,

Clinical medicine,

Hygiene and environmental medicine

© 2024 Herion Muja, Suela Vasil, Dorina Toçi, Timo Clemens, Helmut Brand, Genc Burazeri, published by National Institute of Public Health, Slovenia
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Volume 63 (2024): Issue 3 (September 2024)