Abstract:
The objective of this descriptive predictive research were to study coronary artery preventive behavior and identify its predictive factors among the royal Thai army personnel. A simple random sample of 184 royal Thai army personnel were recruited from Diabetic and Hypertension clinic at Pramongkutklao hospital, the 11th infantry regiment of the king's guard and the second cavalry division of the king's guard. Data were collected using 7 questionnaires; 1) demographic data form, 2) Thai Cardiovascular Risk scores, 3) knowledge about cardiovascular disease, 4) attitude toward cardiovascular preventive behavior, 5) social support, 6) adequacy of resources, and 7) coronary artery preventive behavior questionnaires. All questionnaires were validated by 5 experts. Their CVI were 0.81, 0.80, 0.93, 1.00 and 0.95, respectively. Their Cronbachs alpha coefficients were 0.76, 0.80, 0.76 and 0.79, respectively. Knowledge about cardiovascular disease had KR-20 at 0.76. Data were analyzed using stepwise multiple regression statistics. The finding revealed that 1) coronary artery disease prevention behaviors of royal Thai army personnel was at appropriate level (Mean = 73.39, S.D. = 10.523), 2) five variables were significant predictors of coronary artery disease preventive behaviors. They were adequacy of resources (Beta = .316), attitude toward cardiovascular preventive behavior (Beta = .276), social support (Beta = .219), work shift (Beta = .150) and knowledge about cardiovascular disease (Beta = .144). They could explain 33.2% of coronary artery disease preventive behaviors among the royal Thai army personnel (p < .05). However, army rank and cardiovascular risk scores were not able to predict preventive behaviors for coronary artery disease among the royal Thai army personnel.