Health Behaviour in School-aged Children in China

Children’s health and health behaviours critically affect their long-term development. In recent years, with the growth of the Chinese economy and changes in people’s lifestyles, more and more problems relating to health and health behaviours have emerged among Chinese school-aged children. The idea of conducting the HBSC study in China, a country with nearly 400 million schoolchildren, was initiated by the HBSC Finland research team in collaboration with the China Institute of Sport Science (CISS) in 2007.

The HBSC survey protocol (2001/02) and questionnaire was first translated from English into Chinese. Following this, a pilot study was conducted which indicated that most indicators in the HBSC international questionnaire have a high completion rate and satisfactory test-retest reliabilities for students in Beijing. The HBSC-based behaviour and lifestyle survey for school-aged children was then conducted by CISS in Beijing, strictly adhering to the HBSC research protocol. A total of 5,985 schoolchildren were sampled using multi-stage random cluster sampling methods.

Based on the survey results, CISS researchers analysed a number of different aspects of the health and health behaviours of Chinese schoolchildren. These included physical activity, alcohol use, smoking, sedentary behaviour, academic disengagement and sleep. Based on the results of the survey a report was also published.

As an official Linked Project of the HBSC study, the CISS will continue to promote the work of the HBSC study within China and beyond. In 2016, the HBSC China Linked Project survey was conducted in Haerbin, a north eastern Chinese region with medium socio-economic development status with a sample size of 2358 school-aged children. At present, the project team are planning to conduct the survey in Tibet. In addition, CISS research team has devoted to implement the large scale HBSC Linked Project survey in China together with the HBSC survey 2018.