Health Behavior Patterns of Korean

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to identify population subgroups with similar patterns of diet quality, physical activity, alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking of Korean. The cluster analysis was conducted using the data from Korea National Health Survey(KNHS) in 1995, which consisted of 5,805 persons. We identified six health behavior typologies: 32.9% of the sample had a good diet but sedentary activity level(good diet lifestyle), 7.2% had high activity level but less diet quality(fitness lifestyle). Individuals in the passive lifestyle cluster(39.1%) had no active health promoting activities but tended to avoid risk taking health behavior such as cigarette smoking and alcohol drinking. 1.1% of the sample were in a drinking cluster, 17.2% in a smoking cluster and 2.5% had a hedonic lifestyle characterized by heavy drinking and smoking. The other characteristics of these lifestyle clusters could be presented by demographic and socioeconomic factors.