Healthy or unhealthy? The cocktail of health-related behavior profiles in spanish adolescents

Abstract

The aim of this study was to identify the prevalence and clustering of health-related behaviors in Spanish adolescents and to examine their association with sex, body mass index (BMI), different types of sedentary screen time, and adherence to 24-hour movement guidelines. A final sample of 173 students (M = 12.99 ± 0.51) participated in this study. Cluster analysis was conducted based on five health-related behaviors: PA and sedentary time derived from accelerometers, as well as healthy diet, sedentary screen time, and sleep duration derived from self-reported scales. Recommendations for 24-hour movement guidelines (i.e., physical activity (PA), screen time, and sleep duration) were analyzed both independently and combined. A total of 8.9% of the sample did not meet any of the guidelines, whereas 72.3%, 17.3%, and 1.7% of the sample met 1, 2, or all 3 guidelines, respectively. Six distinct profiles were identified, most of them showing the co-occurrence of healthy-and unhealthy-related behaviors. Given that most of the adolescents failed to meet the combination of PA, screen time, and sleep duration guidelines, these findings suggest the necessity to implement school-based interventions that target multiple health behaviors, especially because (un)healthy behaviors do not always cluster in the same direction.