Exercise Psychology

Unhealthy habits
Name
Institution
Purpose
Lifestyle behaviors related to health to a great extent determine the mortality and disease fundamentals to the health of the public. Some of the lifestyle habits that have been associated to impact the health of the individuals include alcohol consumption, cigarette smoking, and inequalities of health status between groups of different socioeconomic level, diet and physical activities (Yang, He, Wang, Liu, Shen, Gong, & Zhu, 2015). This article presents a cross-sectional study on the assessment of the lifestyle behaviors related to the health for female and male among the urban workers from the rural in Shanghai. This study used a lifestyle score which was based on the above identified six behaviors and their association with the causing factors including the marital status, workplace, mental status, history of migration, and the salary.
Methods
Population
The participants in the study came from four central and three fringing districts in the community health service centres. The sampling involved migrant workers in the construction, manufacturing, domestic service, hospitality, recreation, and small business. All the workers in the workplaces who were migrants were eligible for the study, and this population was more than 50% in every community service centre.
Procedures
The study which was carried out in 2012 from August to October employed a multistage cluster random sampling procedure in recruiting the participants. Before conducting the survey, the researcher sought the consent from the managers or the employers first.

All the volunteers taking part in the study gave out the informed written consent, and there was the personal administration of the questionnaire, but this was under supervision (Yang, He, Wang, Liu, Shen, Gong, & Zhu, 2015). Anyone who had difficulties in completing the survey got the necessary assistance. There were rules of confidentiality to researchers and investigators accessing the questionnaires.
Design
The study used cross-section design. The survey questionnaires were designed to help access the required data. The various socio-demographic characteristics used include the occupation, gender, age, salary, employment, marital status, and education level among others. There was the use of the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised for mental health assessment. The recording included six lifestyle behaviors; alcohol consumption, breakfast patterns, smoking status, sleeping time and quality, eating of fruits, normal meals and vegetable consumption (Yang, He, Wang, Liu, Shen, Gong, & Zhu, 2015). The association between the multiple risk factors and the unhealthy lifestyle score was assessed using a logistic regression model of multiple cumulative odds.
Overall results
Majority of the migrant workers (98.9%) reported having fair or good health while a small percentage indicated suffering from chronic diseases. Others mentioned having blood pressure (9.9%), Obese or overweight (27%), and mental health problem (11.2%) and only 36.9% had a healthy lifestyle (Yang, He, Wang, Liu, Shen, Gong, & Zhu, 2015). Men in hospitality reported unhealthier lifestyle compared to men working in manufacturing while women in construction and manufacturing showed less unhealthy lifestyle compared to women in other areas. Unhealthy lifestyle was high among men in small business and those working for more than 11 hours, while it recorded high for women working more than 8 hours and earned high salaries.
Interpretation of results
The lower rate of the blood pressure recorded can be attributed to the young age of the participants which is a population of a more moderate level of hypertension. There was also a lower fraction of the obese since the participants were those from rural areas who get involved in manual labour thus reducing the risk of obesity. In general, men were recorded to experience unhealthy lifestyle than women due to smoking and alcohol consumption. Therefore, the various risk factors of unhealthy lifestyle habits relate to marital status, salary, workplace scale among others.
Critique
The design of this study was cross-section allowing only correlation evaluation rather than the causation evaluation.
References
Yang, H., He, F., Wang, T., Liu, Y., Shen, Y., Gong, J., & … Zhu, S. (2015). Health-Related Lifestyle Behaviors among Male and Female Rural-to-Urban Migrant Workers in Shanghai, China. Plos ONE, 10(2), 1-14. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0117946