Investigating the Citizensʹʹ Attitudes Toward the Utility Index of Health Stations

ABSTARCT: The present study aims at investigating the citizensʹ attitudes toward the utility index of health stations. The population of the study consisted of the citizens in the age range of 18 to 74 years who frequented health stations. A number of 313 participants were selected from within the population using convenient sampling technique. The research instrument was a researcher-made questionnaire on 5-point Likert scale. The validity of the scale was approved by experts and its reliability was estimated using Cronbach alpha formula (?=0.86). The results of the study showed that 62.3% of the participants used health station equipments less than 3 hours a week, 51.4% complained that the instructions provided to them were insufficient, and 44.7% thought exercise equipments were not safe. Besides, 44.1% of the participants contended that equipment colors were inadequate, 57.2% believed that equipment maintenance was poor, and 53% contended that stations suffered from moderate to poor sanitation. Overall, 54% of the participants evaluated the utility index of health stations to be moderate to low. The results showed that there was no significant difference between men and women in their attitudes toward utility index of the stations while there was a significant difference in the attitudes toward the utility index of the stations in terms of the participantsʹ level of education (P < 0.05). The findings of the study suggest that officials in charge of the health stations need to take better measures to improve the current status of health stations and provide citizens with more satisfaction.