Preventive behaviour and health status among the elderly

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Abstract
The research describes the range of preventive health behaviours undertaken by the elderly, investigates the dimensionality of preventive health behaviour, and explores the relationship between preventive health behaviour, self-assessed and medically assessed health status. Previous research has relied mainly on self-reports of health status. Data from medical examinations and interviews with 115 elderly individuals (aged 65–75) indicated that most elderly persons performed some intentional preventive health practices, as well as a broad range of normative preventive health practices. Particular clusters of preventive health behaviour emerged when the data were subjected to cluster analysis. A short index consisting of five personal preventive health behaviours found in other studies to have a protective effect on long-term health was found to have a low to moderate correlation with the medical and self-assessments of health status employed in the study. These findings indicate particular types of preventive health behaviour of importance for health promotion programmes with the elderly.