HBA - Health Behaviors Assessment
The HBA (Health Behaviors Assessment) measures three areas of healthy lifestyle functioning including physical activity, eating behavior, and personal management skill. The instrument includes 51 items and takes approximately 10 minutes to complete.
The HBA provides an individual student assessment and targets potential behaviors for positive change.
The HBA is useful as a screening device to identify the needs of student cohorts and assist institutional planning activities.
The HBA also includes a measure that indicates student awareness and readiness to make personal improvements.
Since the HBA measures specific behaviors, anchored by a time dimension, it can evaluate individual and group changes.
The HBA was developed by sampling over 2,200 students. An additional 400 students have received pre-test and post-test evaluations to measure their progress after interventions.
How is the HBA used?
The HBA is used as an assessment and evaluation tool for interventions and outcome research. Examples are:
A peer-mentored intervention to improve personal health enhancement of college freshmen has demonstrated significant improvements on 14 out of 19 HBA variables as compared to an education only intervention.
Research establishing how health behaviors of college students are associated with their academic success outcomes.
Normative HBA profiles developed from baseline health behaviors among college freshmen at their first semester (N=1,286).
How do students learn from the HBA?
Upon completion of the inventory, the student receives immediate feedback on an individual profile. The individual profile feedback compares the student's results with established criterion standards into three possible categories:
- Meeting recommendation
- Close, but not meeting recommendation
- Not meeting recommendation
Follow-up resources include classroom healthy behavior presentation, resource website, and individualized intervention.