Health oriented goals, self-regulatory processes, health behaviors, and well-being

The quality and strength of intention as well as planning are the key self-regulatory processes in health behavior change. The aim of the present study was to test whether the processes resulting in implementation of intention depend not only on planning but also on the sense of agency, an involvement and social influence variables. The study involved 143 voluntary participants, 83 women, 56 men, aged 18-35 with high school or higher education. A set of rating scales and questionnaires was used to measure the self-regulatory processes, health behaviors, well-being and their predictors. The results support the notion that health behaviors and well-being were found to be affected by similar predictors such as the intention strength, completeness and action orientation in planning. High evaluation of developmental goals in health decision making was among crucial predictors of health behaviors. Participants with high levels of self-regulatory indicators used credible social influence sources.