Health risk behaviors among rural left-behind children in Sichuan province:a latent class analysis

Objective To investigate the latent classes of health risk behaviors among rural left-behind children in Sichuan province and to provide evidences for making targeted intervention plans.Methods Totally 1 596 rural left-behind children from two township high schools in Zizhong county,Sichuan province were surveyed with the Health Related Behavior Questionnaire for Adolescents.We carried out latent class analysis using MPLUS 7.4 software.Results Among the left-behind students,the identified four latent classes for eight types of health risk behaviors were high-risk behavior group (involving 4%69of the students with relatively higher conditional probabilities for all the health risk behaviors),high self-injury and suicide behavior group (involving 20%321of the students),moderate-risk behavior group (30%479),and low-risk behavior group (46%727).Multinominal logistic regression analysis revealed that boy students (odds ratioOR=2.221,95% confidence interval95%CI:1.319-3.740) and the students with the parents having poor conjugal relationship (OR=4.491,95%CI:2.480-9.727) were more likely to be classified into the high-risk behavior group;the students with higher living expenses (≥ 700 yuan RMB per month) (OR=2.032,95%CI:1.175-9.727) and with the parents having poor conjugal relationship (OR=2.983,95%CI:1.927-4.616) were more likely to be classified into the self-injury and suicide behavior group;and boy students (OR=2.109,95%CI:1.654-2.689) and the students with higher monthly living expenses (OR=2.448,95%CI:1.497-4.004),with the parents having general conjugal relationship (OR=1.774,95%CI:1.305-2.411),and during the first year of senior high school (OR=2.016,95%CI=1.409-2.883) were more likely to be classified into the moderate-risk behavior group.Conclusion There are obvious latent classes in health risk behaviors and the proportion of clustered health risk behaviors are different among left-behind children.More attention should be paid to the left-behind boys with high living expenses and with the parents having poor conjugal relationship.