O'Rourke Teresa, Dale Rachel, Humer Elke, Probst Thomas, Plener Paul, Pieh Christoph
Department for Psychotherapy and Biopsychosocial Health, Danube University Krems, 3500 Krems, Austria.
Department of Child and Adolescence Psychiatry, Medical University of Vienna, 1090 Vienna, Austria.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Jan 18;19(3):1049. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19031049.
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted our daily lives, which in turn has impacted health behaviors. Young people have been particularly affected. This study aimed to assess health behaviors in Austrian apprentices and high school students during the COVID-19 pandemic and whether vaccination willingness is affected by health behaviors.
Two online surveys were conducted via REDCap with 1442 apprentices (female: 53.5%, male: 45.4%) from 29 March to 18 May 2021 and 563 school students (female: 79.6%, male: 18.6%) from 19 June to 2 July 2021. The two samples were matched to account for sociodemographic differences and analyses were run on the matched sample. Besides the health behaviors, namely, smoking, alcohol consumption, cannabis consumption, and exercise, health status and vaccination willingness were also assessed.
Health behaviors were affected by both education group and gender. Apprentices reported significantly more smoking than high school students and this difference was more pronounced in women (all < 0.01). Alcohol consumption was higher in apprentices than school students, but only in women ( < 0.01). There was a trend for the two education groups to differ in their cannabis use as well ( = 0.05). Apprentices took part in more weekly exercise ( < 0.0001), but high school students reported better average health status ( < 0.001). When included in the same model, health behaviors did not affect vaccine willingness, but education group did, with high school students showing a higher willingness to receive the COVD-19 vaccine than apprentices.
These findings support the argument that education type is an important factor for health behaviors, but this is also mediated by gender. Appropriate interventions for adolescents are needed to prevent adverse health behavior changes following the COVID-19 pandemic.
新冠疫情扰乱了我们的日常生活，进而影响了健康行为。年轻人受到的影响尤为显著。本研究旨在评估新冠疫情期间奥地利学徒和高中生的健康行为，以及健康行为是否会影响疫苗接种意愿。
通过REDCap进行了两项在线调查，一项于2021年3月29日至5月18日对1442名学徒（女性：53.5%，男性：45.4%）开展，另一项于2021年6月19日至7月2日对563名学生（女性：79.6%，男性：18.6%）开展。对这两个样本进行匹配以考虑社会人口学差异，并在匹配样本上进行分析。除了吸烟、饮酒、吸食大麻和锻炼等健康行为外，还评估了健康状况和疫苗接种意愿。
健康行为受到教育程度和性别的影响。学徒报告的吸烟情况显著多于高中生，且这种差异在女性中更为明显（均<0.01）。学徒的饮酒量高于学生，但仅在女性中如此（<0.01）。两个教育组在大麻使用方面也存在差异趋势（=0.05）。学徒每周参加锻炼的次数更多（<0.0001），但高中生报告的平均健康状况更好（<0.001）。当纳入同一模型时，健康行为并未影响疫苗接种意愿，但教育程度会影响，高中生接种新冠疫苗的意愿高于学徒。
这些发现支持了以下观点，即教育类型是健康行为的一个重要因素，但这也受到性别的调节。需要针对青少年采取适当干预措施，以防止新冠疫情后出现不良健康行为变化。
