Health Lifestyle Behaviors among U.S. Adults

Existing research that studies individual health behaviors and conceive of behaviors as simplistically reflecting narrow intentions toward health may obscure the social organization of health behaviors. Instead, we examine how eight health behaviors group together to form distinct health behavior niches. Using nationally-representative data from U.S. adults aged 18 and over from the 2004-2009 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), we use Latent Class Analysis to identify classes of behavior based on smoking status, alcohol use, physical activity, physician visits, and flu vaccination. We identify 7 distinct health behavior classes including concordant health promoting (44%), concordant health compromising (26%), and discordant classes (30%). We find significant race/ethnic, sex, regional, and age differences in class membership. We show that health behavior classes are associated with prospective mortality, suggesting that they are valid representations of health lifestyles. We discuss the implications of our results for sociological theories of health behaviors, as well as for multiple behavior interventions seeking to improve population health.