The relationship of cultural values with clean and healthy life behaviour among Islamic boarding school students in Indonesia

Background: Poor clean and healthy life behaviours (CHLB) are often found in students (santri) in Islamic boarding schools (pesantren) in Indonesia. Pesantren is a subculture that has derived different cultural values from society, while santri have a habit of borrowing and lending clothes and see scabies as a blessing. This study aimed to identify and describe the correlation between cultural values and CHLB practices among santri. Design and methods: It used descriptive analytics with a cross-sectional approach. The participants were 100 santri who lived in pesantren and were selected by using stratified random sampling. The cultural values and CHLB practices were assessed using the instruments developed by the writers in the previous study. The statistical analysis using the Spearman correlation test was applied to evaluate the association between cultural values and CHLB practices. Results: The result shows a significant correlation between cultural values and CHLB practices among santri (p=0.004; r=0.284). Most of the santri had positive cultural values (52%) and poor CHLB practices (54%). Conclusions: The findings of this study showed that most of the santri adhered to positive cultural values, and most of them had poor CHLB practices. These findings also showed significant correlation between cultural values and CHLB practices among santri. This study is expected to be the basis for school nurses to provide nursing care with a cultural approach to improve CHLB practices among santri.