1.A cross lagged analysis of the co-occurrence of health risk behaviors and school connectedness among junior high school students
XU Tao, ZHOU Xianwei, ZHANG Tiancheng, YANG Xuejing
Chinese Journal of School Health 2024;45(11):1565-1569
Objective:
To explore the causal relationship between adolescent school connectedness and the co-occurrence with health risk behaviors among junior high school students, so as to provide the reference for reducing the occurrence of adolescents health risk behaviors among junior high school students.
Methods:
A total of 924 students from two junior high schools in Jishou City were selected by the convenience sampling and cluster sampling methods, and two follow up surveys were conducted at 6 month intervals in April (T1) and October (T2) of 2023 using the Adolescent Health Risk Behavior Questionnaire and the School Connection Scale. The scores of the co-occurrence of school connectedness and health risk behaviors among junior high school students were compared by different survey periods and genders using the t-test, and cross lagged analyses were performed using Mplus 8.3 software.
Results:
School connectedness scores among junior high school students in T1 and T2 surveys were (38.86±7.46) (37.87± 7.71 ) and co-occurrence of health risk behaviors scores were (1.64±0.68) (1.83±0.53), respectively, and the differences between the scores of the 2 surveys were statistically significant ( t=4.24, -4.14, P <0.05). The correlation between school connectedness and co-occurrence of health risk behaviors were statistically significant in both surveys ( r =-0.46 to -0.33, P <0.05). Cross lagged analyses showed that school connectedness in T1 negatively predicted the co-occurrence of health risk behaviors in T2 ( β =-0.08), and the co-occurrence of health risk behaviors in T1 negatively predicted the school connectedness in T2 ( β =-0.15) ( P <0.05).
Conclusions
There is a longitudinal causal relationship between school connectedness and co-occurrence of health risk behaviors among junior high school students. School connectedness should be improved through various ways to reduce the co-occurrence of health risk behaviors.