Despite the progress school health promotion has made in recent years, principals and their roles have scarcely been examined in theory and practice. This restraint is somewhat surprising, given that the primary responsibility for most school matters lies with the school administration. Emerging evidence indicates that principals have significant influence on whether or not a school will become and remain a healthy organization (e.g. Dadaczynski & Paulus 2015; Rowling and Samdal 2011; Samdal and Rowling 2011; Viig et al. 2011). However, it largely remains unclear, how school prinicipals influence health promotion activities in their school.

To identify factors which affect principals’ engagement in school health promotion the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) has been used as theoretical framework. Originally this model has been developed to explain social behaviour (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980). TBP comprises four components which in turn have different antecedent components: (1) attitudes (behavioural beliefs and outcome evaluation), (2) subjective norm (normative beliefs and motivation to comply), (3) volitional control and (4) moral responsibility. TBP assumes that the intention (for a specific behavior) mediates between these four components and the behaviour.

Ajzen, I. & Fishbein, M. (1980). Understanding attitudes and predicting social behavior. Englewood: Prentice Hall. Dadaczynski, K. & Paulus, P. (2015). Healthy Principals - Healthy Schools?: A neglected Perspective to School Health Promotion. In V. Simovska & P. McNamara (Ed.), Schools for Health and Sustainability - Theory, Research and Practice (pp 253-273). Springer. Kam, C.-M., Greenberg, M.T., Walls, C.T. (2003). Examining the role of implementation quality in school-based prevention using the PATHS Curriculum. Prevention Science, 4, 55-63. Rowling, L. & Samdal, O. (2011). Filling the black box of implementation for health pro-moting schools. Health Education, 111, 347-366.