Swiss Adolescent Health Behavior Profiles And Mental Distress Trends

Survey data from 30,122 Swiss school-aged adolescents aged 11 to 15, collected across five waves from 2002 to 2018. The dataset, authored by Laura Bechtiger, was used to examine secular changes in health-risk behavior profiles and their associations with mental distress.

Use Cases

• Identify latent health-risk behavior profiles using indicators like physical inactivity, poor sleep, unhealthy diet, smoking, and alcohol use.
• Analyze associations between identified behavior profiles and mental distress metrics, including internalizing symptoms, somatic symptoms, and life satisfaction.
• Examine secular trends by comparing profile prevalence and associations with mental distress across survey waves from 2002 to 2018.
• Test for interactions between behavior profiles and sociodemographic variables like sex using multinomial and linear regression models.
• Investigate age-related patterns by analyzing the likelihood of older adolescents belonging to elevated-risk behavior groups.

Strengths

• 30,122 survey responses from a repeated cross-sectional study.
• Data spans five survey waves over a 16-year period from 2002 to 2018.
• Analysis identifies four consistent behavior profiles across all waves.

Limitations

• The dataset is small in file size (248.6 KB), suggesting limited raw data or aggregated results.
• Specific column names and individual-level data points are not provided in the description.
• Geographic scope is limited to Switzerland, limiting generalizability to other populations.

Provenance

Source

Swiss Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC) study.

Collection Method

Repeated cross-sectional surveys administered to school-aged children.

Time Range

2002 to 2018.

Freshness

Data covers up to 2018; the document was last updated in 2026.

Geography

Switzerland.