Predictors of Health Practices Within Age-sex Groups: National Survey of Personal Health Practices and Consequences, 1979

Health promotion-disease prevention programs share with health behavior research the common objective of identifying population subgroups toward whom services can be targeted. For this report, six age-sex groups were examined to determine similarities and differences in the predictors of eight health practice indices. Data were from the 1979 National Survey of Personal Health Practices and Consequences. Results showed very little similarity of predictors across the three age cohorts (20-34, 35-49, 50-64), between men and women, and among the six age-sex groups. No predictor achieved significance consistently for several health practices in any of the six groups, although years of education made the best showing. The lack of overlap among predictors helps to explain why health promotion messages and recruitment strategies may not appeal to as diverse an audience as initially intended. Possible explanations for the absence of similar predictors include differences in the nature of the various practices themselves, absence of data on intentions behind a person's behavior, and the "over-determined" character of an individual person's behavior.