RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LOCUS OF CONTROL AND HEALTH-RELATED VARIABLES

Locus of Control (LOC) deals with an individual's personal attri-bution of successful or failure. Those with internal LOC believe that events in their lives are under their personal control while individuals with external LOC feel that their lives are dominated by the environment. The theory has been applied to achievement and health-related issues with internals performing higher acad-emically and taking better care of their health (Harvey & Thomas, 2004). Using the Multidimensional Health Locus of Control Scale (MHLC) his study examined the connection between high school students ' LOC and their grade-point aver-ages, extracurricular activity membership, amount of studying time, alcohol use, seatbelt use and tobacco use. Using Pearson correlations, results did not support the notion that students with internal LOC were better students or had better health habits than those with external LOC. A significant correlation was found between involvement in school organizations and less use of alcohol. Another interesting correlation at the.05 level was noted between frequent use of alcohol and regularity of seatbelt use. It appeared that those students who drank alcohol were careful to wear seatbelts. Locus of Control (LOC) refers to an individual's personal belief that the events which occur in life are either a result of personal control and effort, or outside forces such as fate and luck. Perception of positive and negative events as being con-sequences of one's own actions and thereby under one's own personal control is known as internal LOC. In contrast, external LOC refers to the perception of positive or neg-ative events being unrelated to one's own behavior and thereby beyond personal con