Behavioral Profile, Lifestyle and Social Skills in Portuguese Adolescents
Abstract Background: Seventy percent of premature deaths in adults are due to behaviors initiated during adolescence. Therefore, it is essential to promote individual and social behaviors that educate adolescents in the ability to make healthy choices. Thus, the goals of this study were to characterize the lifestyle and social skills as well as to identify homogeneous subgroups in a sample of Portuguese adolescents. Methods : We conduct a cross-sectional study including 1008 adolescents attending 7 th to 9 th grade of five middle schools from Tâmega and Sousa region, of Portugal. My Lifestyle Questionnaire and the Social Skills Inventory were used. To establish a profile of the participants, a Cluster Analysis (K-means) was performed and the Jaccard coefficient was used to assess the stability of the solution found. Results: From the total sample, 556 adolescents with a mean age of 13.43 years (SD=1.1) were included in the analysis. The majority of the sample presented a good lifestyle (72.26% indicating good LS) and 50.7% of the adolescents had a highly elaborated repertoire of social skills. Moreover, three clusters were found. Cluster 1 (n=92) showed a less elaborate SS repertoire and was named the “Adjusted”. Cluster 2 (n=115) comprised adolescents with a good SS repertoire and was named the “Sociable”. Cluster 3 (n=258) was composed by adolescents with a highly elaborate SS repertoire and the best LS indicators, and was named the “Healthy”. Conclusions : The group of adolescents in cluster called “Sociable” needs to be included in health education and social skills programs. NUT and MS behaviors have low values and, therefore, present a greater need for awareness, sensitization and intervention in the school context. Promoting a healthy lifestyle should be part of the academic curriculum and be transversal to all academic disciplines.