THE SELF-ASSESSMENT OF THE HEALTH CONDITION VERSUS PERSONAL RESOURCES AND HEALTH BEHAVIORS OF HOMELESS PEOPLE

Aim
The goal of the paper was to analyze the convergence between the self-assessment of health condition and personal resources as well as health behaviors of homeless people.

Material and methods
The research has been carried out between November 2016 and March 2017 in six centers for the homeless in Poland. The following have been used to collect data from a group of 58 homeless people: an original survey, Nottingham Health Profile (NHP), Health Behavior Inventory (IZZ), Multidimensional Health Locus of Control (MHLC), and General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSES). The data analysis has been carried out with the use of the t-Student method, Mann–Whitney U test, and Spearman’s rho correlation. The level of significance has been accepted as α=0.05.

Results
The achieved results have showed that homeless people assess their health condition as average or indicating a quality better than average. Despite that, these people indicate lower values of health behavior indicators than the average values of the normalization group. Proper eating habits, prophylactic behaviors, and health beneficial practices apply to homeless people much more rarely. Homeless people declare a sense of an external control over their health and a low sense of efficacy. People with a lower sense of own efficacy felt more socially alienated, whereas those with a higher sense of own efficacy were characterized by a higher positive mental attitude.

Conclusions
In terms of their health, homeless people require professional help of many trained specialists, such as for example nurses.