Abstract

Accompanying the shift in emphasis in the health field from biomedicine to health promotion has been a concern to develop knowledge for health promotion, which in turn has engendered a debate about the proper science for health promotion. This thesis provides material for a resolution of this health promotion research debate. ;From a philosophical perspective, the integral role of theory in science justifies the attention to the issue of the appropriate theory for health promotion research. This thesis demonstrates the prejudices of the biomedical theory of health and begins to develop a theory of health appropriate to the principles of health promotion. This thesis proposes that personhood is the highest level goal of natural human functioning relevant to health. An elaborated concept of personhood, of what it means to be a whole person, provides the centre of a theory of health which integrates concerns of post-Ottawa Charter health promotion. The theory describes a positive concept of health that incorporates biological, social and psychological 'factors' in a person and rationalizes principles of health promotion by relating them to the end of promoting personhood. ;The person is thus the object of health promotion research. This thesis proposes that a person is an ontologically holistic 'thing', an 'integrated, inseparably biosocial' being. In light of this conceptualization of the object of research , epidemiology, as the orthodox contender for the science of health promotion, is assessed. Although epidemiology speaks of persons through its host concept and of holism through its epidemiological triad and causal web constructs, its host is an empty person and the ontology of its statistical practices contradicts its holistic claims. If health promotion research is to be consistent with the theory of health proposed in this thesis, epidemiology should not be the science of health promotion. Rather, the methodological implications for health promotion research that emerge from the philosophical and theoretical considerations of this thesis are that intensive, qualitative methods informed by a person-centred theory of health are primary for health promotion research