Alameda County redux: replication in Michigan.

This article describes an attempt to reproduce, in Michigan, cross-sectional findings concerning the relationship between health habits and health status previously obtained in Alameda County, California by Belloc and Breslow. Data for this study were gathered by a telephone interview of a state-wide sample of 3,259 adult Michigan residents. The ridit (relative to an identified distribution) analyses presented include a comparison of findings from the Michigan and Alameda County studies. In Michigan, as in Alameda County, health status was found to be associated with various health practices, both individually and in combination. Consistent relationships were found between physical health status and individual health practices regarding hours of sleep, eating breakfast, eating between meals, cigarette smoking, weight for height, and physical activity. Physical health status was also linked to the overall number of health practices individuals engaged in. When the confidence interval for each ridit value was taken into account, however, only some of the findings proved statistically reliable.