Lithuanian adolescents’ self-rated health in association with lifestyle choices: 2014–2022 trends
| Author | Affiliation | |
|---|---|---|
| Date | Start Page | End Page |
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2025-05-26 | 1 | 1 |
Background: Subjective health assessment in adolescents often reflects a person's health status quite accurately and also could predict their health condition in adulthood. In period of 2002–2022, Lithuanian adolescents’ self-rated health assessment had an improving trend until 2014 but then it started to deteriorate. Healthy lifestyle choices could be related to perceived health.
Objective: To analyze self-rated health and its associations with lifestyle choices among Lithuanian adolescents.
Method: Data were collected during the national HBCS surveys in Lithuania: 2014 (n=5730), 2018 (n=4191), and 2022 (n=5209). Students were from 5th, 7th, 9th grades. Surveys were conducted at schools during the lessons (all rounds in spring semester). The self-reported paper-pencil questionnaires were used to examine indicators such as self-rated health, vegetable consumption, moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, sleep difficulties, alcohol consumption, smoking, gender, grade, and family affluence. Data analysis was conducted using univariate and multivariate logistic regression.
Results: Girls consistently reported worse self-rated health compared to boys; similarly, 9th grade students, and adolescents from the lower FAS group evaluated their health as poorer (p<0.001). The multivariate analysis showed that from the analysed lifestyle factors for lower self-rated health, the most significant (p<0.001) was sleep difficulties (OR=2.42–3.28). Trends analysis (2014–2022) disclosed that irregular vegetable consumption, electronic cigarette use, and conventional cigarette smoking at the same time became relevant factors for self-rated health assessment (p<0.001), while present alcohol consumption became non-significant (p>0.05).
Conclusions: Poorer self-reported health consistently associated with worse lifestyle indicators such as sleep problems, insufficient physical activity, unhealthy eating behavior, and present smoking.