Intergenerational learning about keeping health: a qualitative regional Australian study

Taylor, Judy, Price, Kay, Braunack-Mayer, Annette, Haren, Matthew T., and McDermott, Robyn (2014) Intergenerational learning about keeping health: a qualitative regional Australian study. Health Promotion International, 29 (2). pp. 361-368.

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Abstract

Understanding the conditions under which families try to influence members' health-related practices can provide information to build concepts adding to models of health promotion. This paper reports on an exploratory qualitative study examining the influences of intergenerational relationships in shaping beliefs, knowledge and practices about health and illness in a regional Australian city. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 27 adults with family members of other generations living in the city, all of whom had experience of asthma. We found that overall people's experience of health and illness, particularly in childhood, was taken for granted and not reflected upon. It was in the face of serious illness or death of a family member that objective knowledge about health and illness was sought and integrated within the family leading, in most cases, to significant lifestyle changes or 'doing things differently'. We drew on Bourdieu's concept of the three forms of theoretical knowledge in analysing our findings. We found the concept of knowledge as 'primary taken-for-granted experience', and the concept of praxeological knowledge as the knowledge created by the dialectical relationships between an individual subject and objectives structures were helpful. To influence individual health practices, we need to acknowledge how the family context confirms the taken-for-granted health practices of an individual and the family circumstances that might lead families to seek objective knowledge and make lifestyle changes to promote health.

Item ID: 33429
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 1460-2245
Keywords: intergenerational health communication, qualitative health-related behaviours
Funders: WISH Intergenerational Study of Health, South Australian Premiers Science and Research Fund, National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC)
Projects and Grants: NHMRC Grant ID: 511345
Date Deposited: 12 Jun 2014 02:17
FoR Codes: 11 MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES > 1117 Public Health and Health Services > 111799 Public Health and Health Services not elsewhere classified @ 100%
SEO Codes: 92 HEALTH > 9201 Clinical Health (Organs, Diseases and Abnormal Conditions) > 920199 Clinical Health (Organs, Diseases and Abnormal Conditions) not elsewhere classified @ 100%
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