The clustering of lifestyle behaviors in U.S. college students: a network approach

Abstract

Objective: College student mental health has been decreasing and lifestyle factors may be an important factor in improving mental health. These behaviors may cluster together in complex ways, which could impact the success of lifestyle interventions. Participants: Two samples of U.S. undergraduate college students were drawn from the American College Health Association’s National College Health Assessment (NCHA). The data were collected in Fall of 2019 (N = 30,075) and Spring of 2021 (N = 70,059). Methods: Students responded to various health and well-being related questions. Network models were used to examine how lifestyle behaviors cluster together and additional models contained both lifestyle behaviors and health and well-being outcomes. Results: Lifestyle clustering was found, and some similar patterns were seen across time periods and across levels of psychological distress. Conclusions: Individual lifestyle behaviors exist within a complex lifestyle network, which may need to be accounted for in lifestyle interventions.

Keywords:

• Health behaviors
• lifestyle behaviors
• lifestyle clustering
• mental health
• well-being

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Mallory Lastrapes, Cameron Broadway, Sydney Lord, Joshua Batia, and Danielle Holliday for their help in reviewing this manuscript.

Conflict of interest disclosure

The authors have no conflicts of interest to report. The authors confirm that the research presented in this article met the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements, of the United States of America and the Institutional Review Board at the University of Southern Mississippi deemed that the project did not meet federal of institutional definitions of human subjects research.

Notes

1 At a reviewer’s suggestion, we did run separate network models for males and females using the Pre-COVID sample. Those models and their comparisons are available as supplemental materials.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.