risk-taking behaviors in iranian children and adolescents: a latent class analysis approach: caspian iv study

Background:risk taking behaviors have several negative consequences. this study aimed to identify the subgroups of students basedon risk-taking behaviors and to assess the role of demographic characteristics, depression, anxiety, socioeconomic status (ses), physical inactivity and screen time on membership of specific subgroup.study design:cross-sectionalstudy.methods:this nationwide survey was conducted in 2011-2012 among 14880 students, aged 6-18 yr,selected by multistage, cluster-sampling method from 30 provinces of iran. the students completed two sets of anonymous and validated questionnaires, obtained from the world health organization-global school health survey questionnaires. latentclass analysis was performed to achieve the study objectives.results:overall, 13486 children and adolescentsparticipated were enrolled (response rate 90.6%).they consisted of 50.8% boys, with a mean age of 12.47 ±3.36 year.the prevalence of physical fight, bullying, victimization, active smoking, passive hookah andpassive cigarette smoking was 39.7%, 17.4%, 27.2%, 5.9%, 21.1 and 33.8%, respectively. five latent classes were identified: (a) low risk (46.7%), (b) passive smoker (25.2%), (c violence and aggression taker with passive smoking (13.5%), (d) violence and aggression taker without passive smoking (10.8%) and (e) high risk (3.8%). higher age (or=1.41), being male (or=5.21), depression (or=4.58), anxiety (or=3.38) and screen time (or=3.11) were associated with high-riskclass.conclusion:the prevalence of some risk-takingbehaviors among iranian students is high. our findings emphasize the importance of planning and evaluating preventive interventions by considering different high-risk behaviors simultaneously.