EN
The purpose of the present exploratory study was twofold: (a) to investigate the relationship among parents' and children's knowledge regarding health enhancing behaviors, self-regulation of health, self-efficacy beliefs, and parental socioeconomic status (SES), and (b) to examine whether parental SES, knowledge, self-regulation, and self-efficacy beliefs of health enhancing behaviors predict children's knowledge about health enhancing behaviors, their use of self-regulatory strategies towards the maintenance of health enhancing behaviors, and their self-efficacy beliefs to implement these strategies. The participants included 131 parents and their children. The results showed positive significant correlations among parents' and children's knowledge of health enhancing behaviors, self-regulated strategies, self-efficacy beliefs, and SES. In addition, using regression analyses and squared semi-partial correlations, the strongest predictor of children's self-regulatory skills and self-efficacy beliefs was parents' knowledge of health enhancing behaviors after accounting for SES. A large portion of the variance in children's knowledge of health enhancing behaviors was explained by parents' self-regulation, followed by parents' health knowledge. Parental self-efficacy beliefs were significantly associated only with children's self-efficacy. The findings are discussed from a social cognitive perspective of self-regulation.