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Introduction. Research on the meaning of health and health behaviors is important for the development of health education programmes which should be tailored to the needs of patients. Objective. The aim of the study is to determine whether the place of residence and age have an impact on health behaviours and the perception of health by women past menopause. Materials and method. A survey method and three research instruments were employed: authors' questionnaire, the Health Behaviour Inventory and the Health Criteria List by Juczyński, and the Kupperman Index. The study was carried out among a sample of 102 women after menopause hospitalised in a hospital in eastern Poland. Results. The overall health behaviour indicator (HBI) in the study group was found to reach an average value of 80.1±12.7points. A higher HBI indicator was found to be characteristic of urban rather than rural residents; however, there was no statistically significant difference (p>0.05). The age of respondents did not differentiate statistically their health behaviours (p>0.05). Women who reported their last menstruation before the age of 50 obtained higher results in the dimension of health practices (HPs) than those whose last menstruation ceased after the age of 50 (p<0.05). The respondents attributed the highest importance to health, understood as a property, a state and a goal. Statistically significant differences were observed in the importance of the statement according to which health is a process of "being able to work without tension and stress", as the respondents from urban areas assigned to it a higher average weight than those from rural areas (p< 0.05). Conclusions. A higher overall HBI, as well as indicators for particular categories, were characteristic of women from urban areas. Age did not significantly differentiate the women's health behaviours. Rural residents were dominant in the group of women who rated their health to be very good or good. The respondents attributed the highest importance to health understood as a property, state and goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction. A sample of 95 Polish postmenopausal women after mastectomy were studied with the objective of describing Health Behaviour Indicators (HBIs) among the participants. The notion of health, the subjective evaluation of the participants' health condition and their lifestyle before cancer diagnosis and at present wewre examined. Materials and method. Two data collection instruments were used: a questionnaire developed by the research team, and the Health Behaviour Inventory (HBI) - a standardised questionnaire developed by Juczynski. The HBIs four main dimensions: proper nutritional habits (PNH), preventive behaviours (PB), health practices (HPs), and positive mental attitude (PMA) were examined. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed with the post-hoc test (multiple comparisons conducted Turkey's test). Results. Well-being was the most often indicated description of the health notions of the women surveyed. The majority of women (75; 78.9%) believed that they led a healthy lifestyle. The overall HBI, on average, was 85.7 out of 120. Specifically, HPs was the highest health behaviour enacted (3.75 Standard Deviation [SD] 1.59), followed by PB (3.66; 0.69 SD). In the bivariate analysis, married (87.2; 12.7 SD) and widowed (89.8; 7.9 SD) women reported higher scores than those who were unmarried (76.7; 14.6 SD) and divorced (83.6; 12.5 SD) (p < 0.05). Conclusions. HBI of postmenopausal women after mastectomy is high, which may suggest that mastectomy at the postmenopausal state enforces pro-healthy HBs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]