The clusters of health-risk behaviours and mental wellbeing and their sociodemographic correlates: a study of 15,366 ASEAN university students

Wattanapisit, A; Rahman, H Abdul; Car, J; Abdul-Mumin, Khadizah H.; de la Cruz, MHTO; Chia, M; Rosenberg, M; Ho, MHR; Chaiyasong, S; Mahmudiono, T; Rodjarkpai, Y; Dinov, ID; Ottom, M; Amornsriwatanakul, A

doi:10.26181/23657538.v1

The clusters of health-risk behaviours and mental wellbeing and their sociodemographic correlates: a study of 15,366 ASEAN university students

journal contribution

posted on 2023-07-11, 00:27 authored by A Wattanapisit, H Abdul Rahman, J Car, Khadizah H. Abdul-MuminKhadizah H. Abdul-Mumin, MHTO de la Cruz, M Chia, M Rosenberg, MHR Ho, S Chaiyasong, T Mahmudiono, Y Rodjarkpai, ID Dinov, M Ottom, A Amornsriwatanakul

Background: This study investigated, through cluster analysis, the associations between behavioural characteristics, mental wellbeing, demographic characteristics, and health among university students in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) University Network – Health Promotion Network (AUN-HPN) member universities. Methods: Data were retrieved from a cross-sectional self-administered online survey among undergraduate students in seven ASEAN countries. A two-step cluster analysis was employed, with cluster labels based on the predominant characteristics identified within the clusters. The ‘healthy’ cluster was assigned as the reference group for comparisons using multinomial logistic regression analysis. Results: The analytic sample size comprised 15,366 university students. Five clusters of student-types were identified: (i) ‘Healthy’ (n = 1957; 12.7%); (ii) ‘High sugary beverage consumption’ (n = 8482; 55.2%); (iii) ‘Poor mental wellbeing’ (n = 2009; 13.1%); (iv) ‘Smoker’ (n = 1364; 8.9%); and (v) ‘Alcohol drinker’ (n = 1554; 10.1%). Being female (OR 1.28, 95%CI 1.14, 1.45) and being physically inactive (OR 1.20, 95%CI 1.04, 1.39) increased the odds of belonging to the ‘High sugary beverage consumption’ cluster. Being female (OR 1.21, 95%CI 1.04, 1.41), non-membership in a sports club (OR 1.83, 95%CI 1.43, 2.34) were associated with ‘Poor mental wellbeing’. Obesity (OR 2.03, 95%CI 1.47, 2.80), inactively commuting to campus (OR 1.34, 95%CI 1.09, 1.66), and living in high-rise accommodation (OR 2.94, 95%CI 1.07, 8.07) were associated with membership in the ‘Smoker’ cluster. Students living in The Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam had a higher likelihood of being alcohol drinkers, compared with those who lived in Brunei. Conclusions: ASEAN university students exhibited health-risk behaviours that typically clustered around a specific health behaviour and mental wellbeing. The results provided support for focusing interventions on one dominant health-risk behaviour, with associated health-risk behaviours within clusters being potential mediators for consideration.

Funding

This study was funded in part by the Thai Health Promotion Foundation through Children and Youth Physical Activity Studies (Ref: 61-00-1814), the Centre of Advanced Research, Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD/RSCH/1.10/FICBF(b)/2019/005), and NIH training grant (T32 GM141746).

History

Publication Date

2022-10-01

Journal

BMC Public Health

Volume

22

Article Number

1840

Pagination

12p.

Publisher

BioMed Central

ISSN

1471-2458

Rights Statement

© The Author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.