Abstract

The growth in worksite health promotion programs has grown over the past 30 years. However, some of today's programs lack one or more of the fundamentals needed to achieve their goals. Common shortcomings include poor participation levels, lack of appropriate incentives, lack of options for program delivery, and lack of tailoring programs to meet the needs and wants of a diverse workforce. The purpose of this study was to identify what influences employees' decisions regarding participation in worksite wellness programs. Opinions of eligible worksite health promotion participants were collected using a web-based questionnaire adopted from the 2004 Porter Novelli HealthStyles Questionnaire (n = 437). Percentages of responses were calculated by frequency counts. Among the employees that responded to the survey 71.3% were female, 45.0% were faculty, and the mean age was 46.13 years. Respondents reported they would be very likely to use paid time to exercise at work (71.8%). The most frequently reported preferred program were personalized diet or exercise counseling (58.5%). The most commonly reported barriers to using worksite wellness services were no time during the work day (67%) and the most commonly reported incentives for utilizing employee wellness services were having programs held at a convenient time (81.7%). The findings from this study present several opportunities to further explore best practices of health promotion among within the University and other workplace wellness programs.

Advisor

Judith K. Luebke

Committee Member

Joye M. Bond

Committee Member

Autumn Hamilton

Date of Degree

2013

Language

english

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Health Science

College

Allied Health and Nursing

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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In Copyright