Family Reciprocal Determinism

1. Statement of the Problem
The way in which one’s health is conducted depends on one’s individual elements. Adding on, perceived stress has been thought to be linked to bad dietary and physical exercise choices. Bandura’s social cognitive theory states that personal behavior has a direct correlation with person, behavior, and environment. Therefore, perceived stress, which arises from the interactions of these things, has the potential to affect food choices, sedentary behavior, physical activities, and the environment. Reciprocal determinism suggests that one’s actions can be influenced by the environment and the people that are occupying the environment. With all of this said, family is the most important factor in one’s social life and

Bandura’s theoretical framework expresses that the individual factors of people connect with each other repeatedly over a wide span of time. His notion of a triadic reciprocal determinism can also be applied to the area of family. Direct and indirect influences should be contemplated for the model of family reciprocal determinism. Direct being face to face confrontations between the family members and indirect being just the influence of the environment on a person. Bandura’s social cognitive theory connects stress and health habits on an interpersonal level.
3. Hypothesis
The stress of a person has the ability to alter his or her health by means of affecting one’s physical activities, sedentary behavior, and food intake. Also, the stress of one family member may be capable of influencing the health behavior of the remaining family members in the household.
4. Methods or

214 families that consisted of two parents and one child were given 3 sets of questionnaires and were told to fill them out separately. There were six things that were being questioned in the questionnaire: perceived stress, chronic stress during childhood, physical activity, sedentary time, food consumption, and education level. Perceived stress was calculated using the 3 subscales of Trierer Inventory for Chronic Stress and it was used to assess parental stress. The subscales used were: work overload (8 items), social overload (6 items), and social tension (6 items). The assessment for stress in children was calculated by using the Chronic Stress during Childhood scale. Three subscales were used: school overload (8 items), social tension (5 items), and lack of time (3 items). All participants rated items on a 5 point Likert scale for perceived stress and chronic childhood stress. Physical activity was shown by the parents recording the number of days that they committed to performing at least 30 minutes of exercise, and for the child 60 minutes. This was recorded both during a normal week and during the last week. A modified version of the “Golden Leisure Time Physical Activity” was used as well. Sedentary time was found by asking parents and children how much of their leisure time was spent on sedentary activities on both weekdays and weekends. A Food Frequency Questionnaire based on a 7 point