A study about effectiveness of the health promoting schools supporting network on schools' self-efficacy in Taiwan

Taiwan launched the “Health-Promoting School Program” in 2001, and has established and provided a supporting network system to schools at various levels. This supporting network includes professional support for guidance teams and administrative support from governmental units. This study aims to discuss the effectiveness of such supporting network system to the self-efficacy of schools while carrying out the Health-Promoting School Program. As a cross-sectional study, the target population is staff involved in the Health-Promoting School Program from all junior high schools and elementary schools in Taiwan. Stratified systematic sampling design was employed based on junior high schools or elementary schools, counties or cities, and school size etc., and probability proportional to size (PPS) was used at each stratum. A total of 800 schools were sampled and a total of 621 valid questionnaires were received, giving a receiving rate of 77.63%. As revealed from results of stepwise regression analysis, age of research subjects, subjects' relationship with guidance teams, and satisfaction of policies and resources had significant predictability to subjects' efficacy while carrying out the Health-Promoting School Program (total variance 23.2%, p<0.001). The satisfaction of policies and resources was found with the best predictability with variance of 16.9%. This study showed that the health-promoting school supporting network gives a positive impact to efficacy of executing the Health-Promoting School Program. Effort should be placed to strengthen the relationship between guidance teams and schools, and improve each school's satisfaction about relative policies and resources.