Main findings
Health-related behaviors and psychosocial symptoms divided adolescents into distinct subgroups in which adverse lifestyle patterns, including low levels of physical activity, high BMI and smoking tended to persist between the ages of 16 and 18. Smoking co-occurred with psychosocial symptoms in both genders. Among girls, several unhealthy behaviors and psychosocial symptoms accumulated, whereas inactive boys had more sleeping problems than the others. Adolescents with a high BMI emerged as a group of their own in both sexes. Unhealthy behaviors and psychosocial problems were uncommon among one half of boys and two-thirds of girls. Correlations between socio-economic status and adverse lifestyle, emotional and behavioral problems were low.
Some relations to existing literature
In the current work, adolescents with emotional and behavioral symptoms smoked the most, and this unhealthy behavior continued at the age of 18, and may do so later on [
52]. A wide array of studies have illustrated significant associations of emotional and behavioral problems [
24,
43,
53] and the co-occurrence of both symptoms [
54,
55] with cigarette use. Whereas Colder et al. [
54] and Miller-Johnson et al. [
55] established an association between high levels of co-occurring psychosocial problems and smoking, we observed that psychosocial symptoms occur at differing rates, with externalizing problems being more prevalent. Youth with co-occurring psychosocial symptoms tend to have a greater number of friends involved in risky lifestyles [
56], and this is likely to endanger them to risk-taking behavior, which may include smoking. On the other hand, cigarettes may serve as self-medication for improving attention or managing stress.
Surprisingly, our analyses also showed that psychosocial symptoms overlap with a higher level of physical activity among boys. A similar finding was also observed among girls, but only among some of those who had psychosocial problems. Even though it is in contrast with common assumptions [
23,
25], positive associations between higher physical activity and psychosocial problems also exist [
57‐
59]. It seems that only certain subscales of psychosocial problems, e.g. aggressive behavior [
57,
58], and types of sports, e.g. team sports with aggressive characteristics [
59], are relevant to the existence of the relation. However, we found no explanatory differences in subscales of psychosocial symptoms or in sporting activities between the subgroups (data not shown). Perhaps disparities in the smoking behavior determine co-occurrence among girls.
Nearly 12% of the girls in our study had problems with psychosocial or lifestyle issues including physical inactivity, sedentary behavior, and short sleeping times. The accumulation of multiple risk factors is a prevalent phenomenon among adolescents [
60,
61], and associations of female gender [
61,
62], depressiveness [
63], low self-esteem [
64], high anxiety scores [
60], and smoking cigarettes [
21] with the presence of the multiple health-related risk factors previously acknowledged lend support to our observations. It is likely that some underlying factors, perhaps related to the social environment, for example, the habits of family and friends [
60,
64], have influenced the concentration of several behaviors. Moreover, a greater number or heightened levels of risk factors may have occurred among these girls.
Obtaining sufficient levels of sleeping times constituted a notable problem for the most sedentary and physically inactive boys, which is in line with some [
8,
65], but not all studies [
66] investigating the associations between these factors. An LCA study by Laska et al. [
35] found that inadequate physical activity clustered with inadequate sleep patterns, but additional knowledge of the patternings of all three behaviors seems to be limited. One possible explanation for our results may be that watching television, using computers or perhaps doing homework in the late evening results in delayed bedtimes and frequent difficulties in falling asleep [
67], which in turn limits the opportunity to get sufficient sleep. This may lead to daytime sleepiness [
68], especially during school days, and also have an effect on exercise behavior. In contrast, regular physical activity tends to improve sleep quality, which may also explain the observed relation [
69]. Surprisingly, short sleeping time did not coincide with psychosocial symptoms among boys, which suggests that lifestyle factors might be more relevant in boy’ sleeping behavior.
Among both boys and girls, a group with a very high BMI emerged. These adolescents had comparably low levels of physical activity and long sitting times, but other unhealthy behaviors and psychosocial symptoms appeared to be rare. This is a surprising finding, since one could expect that the most inactive adolescents would have the highest BMI [
31,
70] or at least that weight problems would exist among several groups. However, moderate patterns of physical activity and sedentary behavior have also been linked to increased BMI [
70]. In addition, it is likely that these adolescent’ eating behaviors, not evaluated in our study, differ from the others’.
Strengths and weaknesses
To the best of the author’ knowledge, the current work is the first to apply LCA to patterning of both psychosocial and lifestyle factors in a sample of adolescents. The data was based on a large birth cohort, which is also definitely another strength of this study. Despite the follow-up population being a subcohort of the original cohort, it can be considered a representative sample [
71].
A few limitations of this study should also be taken into account. Firstly, our results relied on self-report values, except BMI at 16 years. Participants may have under- or over-reported their behaviors on account of social desirability, for example, which may have led to bias. However, previous studies of adolescents have suggested that self-administered questionnaires are reliable methods for assessing adolescent’psychosocial and lifestyle behaviors [
7,
38,
72]. Compared to self-reported values, accelerometer-derived physical activity/inactivity would have been more accurate method to investigate activity patterns but in a large population-based study as the current work it would have been difficult to conduct. Secondly, a larger proportion of boys than girls belonging to the NFBC 1986 did not fill in the YSR questionnaire properly or did not respond at all (32% of boys vs. 21% of girls; [
36]). Non-respondent males were found to have slightly more problems than those who replied [
36]. Thus, we may have underestimated the psychosocial problems among the boys. Thirdly, we were unable to study the persistence of sleep and psychosocial symptoms, as we did not inquire about sleeping or measure psychosocial problems with the YRS questionnaire in the follow-up. Finally, the follow-up period was quite short to fully understand the persistence of adverse health-related behaviors.