The Process of Female University Students' Experiences in Healthy Dieting

Article information

Res Community Public Health Nurs. 2012;23(3):244-255

Publication date (electronic) : 2012 September 30

doi : https://doi.org/10.12799/jkachn.2012.23.3.244

Department of Nursing, Pukyong National University, Busan, Korea.

Corresponding author: Kim, Jeong-Soo. Department of Nursing, Pukyong National University, 599-1 Daeyeon 3-dong, Nam-gu, Busan 608-737, Korea. Tel: +82-51-629-5784, Fax: +82-51-629-5789, downey@pknu.ac.kr

Received 2012 April 23; Accepted 2012 September 04.

Abstract

Purpose

This study was to describe and develop the female university students' healthy dieting.

Methods

The data were collected from 9 female students sampled from two universities. The grounded theory of Strauss and Corbin (1990) was applied.

Results

As a result, 40 concepts, 16 subcategories, and seven categories were deduced from open coding. Emerged seven major categories were as followings: (1) Recognizing of general health condition, (2) Try to actively participate on social activities, (3) Searching for continuous healthy exercising methods, (4) Utilizing of social support system for healthy dieting, (5) Making an individual healthy rhythms, (6) Exhibiting abilities of self-control, (7) Charging self-confidences. The periods of process were divided into 4 stages, the phase of facing self-health, the phase of searching living conditions, the phase of developing individual strategies, and the phase of forming self-confidence. The core variable, "discovering self competencies" incorporated the relationship between and among all categories and explained the process.

Conclusion

This study had described the process of healthy dieting of female university students in Korea. These findings have important implications for health promotion of the female university students and can be utilized as material for developing health programs.

Keywords: Life style; Female; Universities; Students; Qualitative research

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Figure 1

The process of 'Healthy dieting'.

Table 1

Categorization by Grounded Theory