Sustaining habits of attending cultural events and maintenance of health: a longitudinal study

The purpose of this study was to assess how changes in the habit of attendi ng cultural events in the community might predict self-reported health, Thi s study made use of data based on two interviews, 8 years apart, with 3793 adults aged 25-74 years from a simple random sample of the Swedish populati on. The subjects were interviewed in 1982-1983 and re-interviewed using the same questionnaire in 1990-1991. The setting was a Swedish interview surve y of living conditions comprising a random sample of the adult population. Self-reported health status was the main outcome measure. The variables use d for control purposes were baseline health status according to the survey of 1982-1983, age (at baseline), type of residence, geographical region of domicile, and socio-economic status (level of education). A correlation was found between perceived poor health and all the independent variables, as well as an influence in the expected direction for all of them; poor educat ion, increasing age and a low degree of urbanization all predicted poorer p erceived health. In the still model (including all nine independent variabl es), those who became culturally less active between the first and second o ccasion, or those who were culturally inactive on both occasions ran a 65% excess risk of impaired perceived health compared with those who were cultu rally active on both occasions. Furthermore, those who changed from being c ulturally less active to being more active had about the same level of perc eived risk as those active on both occasions. These results could be in agr eement with a causal influence of stimulation and suggest that cultural sti mulation is a 'perishable commodity'. While recruiting new consumers would in that case promote health, continued frequent replenishment of the cultur al stimulation may be just as important.