(1) Background: This study examines the associations between risk behaviours and adolescent emotional and physical dating and relationship violence (DRV) victimisation and perpetration, and how these vary by gender. The risk behaviours explored include bullying, cyberbullying, sexting, alcohol, and cannabis use; (2) Methods: Cross-sectional self-report data from the School Health Research Network (SHRN) 2019 Student Health Wellbeing (SHW) survey of 48,397 students aged 11-16 from 149 schools across Wales were analysed using single and multiple-behaviour logistic regression models to explore the associations between each risk behaviour and emotional and physical DRV victimisation and perpetration; (3) Results: Bivariate analyses revealed a statistically significant association between DRV and all risk behaviours. In multivariate analyses, students who reported bullying, cyberbullying, sexting, and substance use, compared to those that had not, had significantly higher odds of experiencing and perpetrating emotional and physical DRV; and (4) Conclusions: Future studies on DRV should consider a mixed-methods approach to explore the context in which DRV and risk behaviours interrelate.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFYoung people's wellbeing is often lowest where they assume a relatively low position within their school's socioeconomic hierarchy, for example, among poorer children attending more affluent schools. Transition to secondary school is a period during which young people typically enter an environment which is more socioeconomically diverse than their primary school. Young people joining a school with a higher socioeconomic status intake relative to their primary school may assume a relatively lowered position within their school's socioeconomic hierarchy, experiencing a detriment to their wellbeing as a consequence.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Health and education are intrinsically linked, while both are significantly patterned by socioeconomic status throughout the life course. Nevertheless, the impact of promoting health via schools on education is seen by some as a "zero-sum game"; ie, focusing resources on health improvement activity distracts schools from their core business of educating pupils, potentially compromising educational attainment. There is emerging evidence that school health improvement interventions may beneficially influence both health and attainment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: This study examines primary schoolchildren's perceptions of e-cigarettes and tobacco cigarettes, and associations with parental smoking, vaping and socioeconomic status.
Methods: Survey of 2218 10-11-year-old children in 73 schools in Wales.
Results: Overall, 36% reported that a parent figure smoked compared to 21% for vaping, with parental smoking lower in affluent families (OR = 0.
Background: Gambling opportunities are increasingly available and acceptable to many adolescents. Adolescent problem gambling has been associated with poor outcomes, such as lower reported physical and mental health. While much research has focussed on 'problem' gambling, analysing the distribution and determinants of experimentation with gambling is important in order to understand its normalization and population level consequences.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: This study examines the prevalence of dating and relationship violence (DRV) victimization, perpetration and joint victimization and perpetration, and associations between DRV and socio-demographic characteristics.
Methods: Cross-sectional self-report data from 74 908 students aged 11-16 from 193 schools across Wales were collected and analysed using generalized estimating equations to examine prevalence and predictors of emotional and physical DRV victimization, perpetration and joint victimization and perpetration.
Results: More girls reported emotional victimization (28%) and perpetration (18%) than boys (20% and 16%, respectively).
Challenges in changing school system functioning to orient them towards health are commonly underestimated. Understanding the social interactions of school staff from a complex systems perspective may provide valuable insight into how system dynamics may impede or facilitate the promotion of health and wellbeing. Ego social network analysis was employed with wellbeing leads within four diverse case study schools to identify variability in embeddedness of health and wellbeing roles.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFComplex systems approaches to social intervention research are increasingly advocated. However, there have been few attempts to consider how models of intervention science, such as the UK's Medical Research Council complex interventions framework, might be reframed through a complex systems lens. This article identifies some key areas in which this framework might be reconceptualized, and a number of priority areas where further development is needed if alignment with a systems perspective is to be achieved.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPositive relationships with family, friends and school staff are consistently linked with health and wellbeing during adolescence, though fewer studies explore how these micro-systems interact to influence adolescent health. This study tests the independent and interacting roles of family, peer and school relationships in predicting substance use, subjective wellbeing and mental health symptoms among 11-16 year olds in Wales. It presents cross-sectional analyses of the 2013 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children survey, completed by 9055 young people aged 11-16 years.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Implementing health improvement is often perceived as diverting resource away from schools' core business, reflecting an assumption of a "zero-sum game" between health and education. There is some evidence that health behaviors may affect young people's educational outcomes. However, associations between implementation of school health improvement and educational outcomes remains underinvestigated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRecent years have seen a growing emphasis on the value of building and testing middle range theory throughout the development and evaluation of complex population health interventions. We agree that a coherent theoretical basis for intervention development, and use of evaluation to test key causal assumptions and build theory, are crucial. However, in this editorial, we argue that such recommendations have often been operationalised in somewhat simplistic terms with potentially perverse consequences, and that an uncritical assumption that an intervention explicitly based on theory is inherently superior carries significant risks.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: This study investigates how the sexual health outcomes of a representative sample of students aged 15-16 in Wales vary according to the person delivering Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) in schools, students' access to on-site sexual health services and access to free condoms.
Methods: Cross-sectional, self-report survey data were collected from students who participated in the 2015/16 School Health Research Network questionnaire in Wales. Data were analyzed from 59 schools, totalling 3781 students aged 15-16 (M = 15.
Health inequalities emerge during childhood and youth, before widening in adulthood. Theorising, testing and interrupting the mechanisms through which inequalities are perpetuated and sustained is vital. Schools are viewed as settings through which inequality in young people's health may be addressed, but few studies examine the social processes via which institutional structures reproduce or mitigate health inequalities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To investigate the association of living in foster care (FC) with substance use and subjective well-being in a sample of secondary school students (11-16 years) in Wales in 2015/16, and to examine whether these associations are attenuated by the perceived quality of interpersonal relationships.
Design: Cross-sectional, population-based health behaviour and lifestyle questionnaire.
Setting And Participants: Wales, UK; young people who took part in the 2015/16 School Health Research Network (SHRN) questionnaire (n=32 479).
Background: Interventions to improve young people's health are most commonly delivered via schools. While young people attending the lowest socioeconomic status (SES) schools report poorer health profiles, no previous studies have examined whether there is an 'inverse care law' in school health improvement activity (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Objectives: Referring clinicians' experiences of exercise referral schemes (ERS) can provide valuable insights into their uptake. However, most qualitative studies focus on patient views only. This paper explores health professionals' perceptions of their role in promoting physical activity and experiences of a National Exercise Referral Scheme (NERS) in Wales.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Breakfast consumption has been consistently associated with health outcomes and cognitive functioning in schoolchildren. Evidence of direct links with educational outcomes remains equivocal. We aimed to examine the link between breakfast consumption in 9-11-year-old children and educational outcomes obtained 6-18 months later.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Socioeconomic inequalities in health behaviour emerge in early life before tracking into adulthood. Many interventions to improve childhood health behaviours are delivered via schools, often targeting poorer areas. However, targeted approaches may fail to address inequalities within more affluent schools.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProcess evaluation is an essential part of designing and testing complex interventions. New MRC guidance provides a framework for conducting and reporting process evaluation studies
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Interventions to address inequalities in adolescent health behaviors often target children from less affluent families, or schools in poorer areas. Few studies have examined whether school- or family-level affluence predicts health behaviors independently, or in combination.
Methods: This article reports secondary analysis of the Welsh Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC) survey.
Objective: Small increases in smoking restrictions in cars and homes were reported after legislation prohibiting smoking in public places. Few studies examine whether these changes continued in the longer term. This study examines changes in restrictions on smoking in cars and homes, and child exposure to secondhand smoke (SHS) in these locations, since 2008 postlegislation surveys in Wales.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: E-cigarettes are seen by some as offering harm reduction potential, where used effectively as smoking cessation devices. However, there is emerging international evidence of growing use among young people, amid concerns that this may increase tobacco uptake. Few UK studies examine the prevalence of e-cigarette use in non-smoking children or associations with intentions to smoke.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: While an increasing number of randomised controlled trials report impacts of exercise referral schemes (ERS) on physical activity, few have investigated the mechanisms through which increases in physical activity are produced. This study examines whether a National Exercise Referral Scheme (NERS) in Wales is associated with improvements in autonomous motivation, self-efficacy and social support, and whether change in physical activity is mediated by change in these psychosocial processes.
Methods: A pragmatic randomised controlled trial of NERS across 12 LHBs in Wales.