HEALTH LIFE-STYLE PATTERNS OF UNITED-STATES ADULTS

Background. Reaching national health objectives depends upon our abili ty to encourage the performance of multiple good health behaviors. The re are cognitive, social, and biological reasons for expecting health behaviors to cluster. However, few studies have found significant asso ciations among health behaviors, with the exception of the documented link between smoking and alcohol consumption. Methods. We used cluster analysis to identify population subgroups with similar patterns of di et quality, physical activity, alcohol consumption, and cigarette smok ing. This is the first study of health behavior interrelationships to include a measure of overall diet quality and a large sample from a na tionally representative survey of U.S. adults. Results. We identified seven health behavior typologies: 10% of the sample (health promoting lifestyle) had an overall healthy lifestyle, 25% had a good diet but s edentary activity level, 18% had fair diet but high activity level (fi tness lifestyle). Individuals in the passive lifestyle cluster (25%) h ad no active health promoting activities but did avoid risk taking hea lth behaviors. Six percent of the sample were in a drinking cluster, 1 5% in a smoking cluster, and 2% had a hedonic lifestyle characterized by heavy drinking and smoking. These lifestyle clusters could be chara cterized by demographic and socioeconomic factors. Conclusions. This r esearch indicates that it is possible to identify a discrete number of health lifestyles in a population sample of U.S. adults. Understandin g past, present, and changing health lifestyles may provide insights f or health behavior research and information for the development and ta rgeting of public health programs that can impact on multifactorial ch ronic diseases. (C) 1994 Academic Press, Inc.