Correlates of multiple chronic disease behavioral risk factors in Canadian children and adolescents

Objectives: Little is known about correlates of multiple behavioral risk factors in youth. We assessed potential individual, social and school correlates of multiple chronic disease behavioral risk factors (physical inactivity, sedentary behavior, tobacco smoking, alcohol drinking and high BMI) in a representative sample of Canadian youth aged 10-15 years.

Methods: Cross-sectional data (n = 1747) from Cycle 4 (2000/2001) of the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth were used. Information on sociodemographic characteristics, youth and parents' health behaviors and school characteristics were collected using an age-specific self-administered questionnaire for youth, a questionnaire for parents and a questionnaire for school principals. Hierarchical ordinal regression models were constructed to investigate the associations between selected covariates and multiple behavioral risk factors, defined as an ordinal variable with four levels (zero or one risk factor, two risk factors, three risk factors and four or five risk factors).

Results: Overall, older age (odds ratio; 95% confidence interval = 1.18; 1.05-1.33), parental smoking (1.49; 1.09-2.03), having reported that most/all of peers smoke (7.31; 4.00-13.35) or drink (3.77; 2.18-6.53) and living in a lone-parent family (1.94; 1.31-2.88) increased the likelihood of having multiple behavioral risk factors. Youth with high self-esteem (0.92; 0.85-0.99) and those from families with post-secondary education (0.58; 0.41-0.82) were less likely to have a higher number of risk factors.

Conclusions: Although several individual and social characteristics were correlated with multiple behavioral risk factors, no school-related correlates emerged. These variables need to be considered in planning of early chronic disease prevention programs among youth.