Health Promoting Behaviors of the Child Care Providers for Preschool Children in the Child Development Center, Chon Buri Province

The objectives of this study were : 1) to study health promoting behaviors of the child care  providers  for preschool children  in  the child development center, Chon Buri  Province, and 2) to compare health promoting behaviors of the child care providers for preschool children  in  the child development center, Chon Buri  Province, with differences  in age, education, income, child care experience, and child care training acquirement. The sample was 215 child care providers of child development center under supervision of Subdistrict Administration Organization in Chon Buri province, Thailand.  The questionnaire used in this study was designed to obtain data related to: 1) demographic data, including age, education, income, child care experience, and child care training acquirement, and 2) health promoting behaviors of the child care providers for preschool children. The internal consistency reliability using Cronbach’s Coefficient of Alpha was reported at .87.  The data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics, t- test, and One Way Analysis of Variance.  The result demonstrated that: 1) health promoting behaviors of the child care providers for preschool children, both all domain and subdomain, were at high level; the behaviors with lowest score for each domain included taking care the child to bath at least once a day, taking the child to play in playground with child care provider’s supervision, promoting eating atmosphere, teaching the child to hug and touch appropriately to express love to other, and telling a story or singing a cradlesong to promote child development ; 2) health promoting behaviors of the child care providers for preschool children who were different in age, education, income, child care experience, and child care training acquirement were not significantly different at p-value .05.  In conclusion, the behaviors to promote health of preschool children that the child care providers infrequently performed should be encouraged to implement in order to promote health of the preschool children in the child development center.