The Healthy Lifestyle Habits Screening Questionnaire: A pilot study in the Canary Islands.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to assess the validity and reliability of a self-administered screening questionnaire to detect deficiencies in the health habits of the adult population of the Canary Islands (Spain). DESIGN: The questionnaire initially included 30 items based on previous questionnaires and following the recommendations of the World Health Organization about healthy and unhealthy diet, screen time, physical activity, and sleep habits. It also included a section related to hygiene due to the importance that hygienic habits have in people's health. SETTING: The questionnaire was self-administered online. PARTICIPANTS: Data was collected from 401 participants from the Canary Islands (age range 18-73 years) who volunteered to fill in the questionnaire online. RESULTS: The questionnaire revealed adequate overall reliability indexes (Cronbach's α>.70, Mcdonald's ω>.70), and construct validity. Hierarchical linear regression analysis revealed age, sex, and income to be significantly (p<.05) related to adults' health lifestyle habits in our population, sex and age explaining the majority of the variance. However, education and incomes were found non-significant (p>.05) when education was introduced into the model. Those results pointed out that older people and women show healthier lifestyle habits. CONCLUSION: The questionnaire proved to be a brief, reliable, and valid tool to assess health lifestyle habits in adults in the Canary Islands. Furthermore, results pointed out that in future intervention studies with children, variables such as adults' sex, age, and, to a lesser extent, monthly income should be taken into consideration.