About the research
The personality trait, conscientiousness, has been shown to be a strong predictor of health behaviours and better health outcomes. As one trait in the five–factor model of personality, its characteristic behaviors include being efficient, organised and systematic. But does this association stay constant over time?
Longitudinal studies can be hugely helpful in revealing the long-term effects of such factors. Unfortunately, studies that examine personality associated with behaviours over time are rare.
This research uses unique data from the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE) to establish whether one particular facet, school-related conscientiousness, is associated with the onset and change in alcohol drinking and cigarette smoking frequency over the course of several years.
For all pupils, the researchers found that higher self-reported conscientiousness predicted lower initial alcohol drinking across four years (from year 9 to 12). In girls, higher conscientiousness was marginally associated with a slower rate of change in the move from non-drinker to drinker but significantly associated with a faster upturn in this change. Moreover, higher conscientiousness predicted non-smoker status, greater initial cigarette smoking frequency for pupils (in smokers) but a change towards less frequent smoking (in smokers).
As school-related conscientiousness is an important facet that allows us to predict health behaviour onset and change during adolescence, this study illustrates the value of representative population samples that allow researchers to study associations between personality traits and health behaviours over time.
Methodology
This study used a representative sample of 15,770 schools pupils in England. Repeated measures of alcohol drinking and cigarette smoking frequency were taken. There were three sources of data for each young person: their interview, an interview with their parents, and a household information file. At the time of writing, the first four waves of data were employed: 15,770 households at wave 1 (2004, year 9, typical age 13–14), 13,539 at wave 2 (2005, year 10, typical age 14–15), 12,439 at wave 3 (2006, year 11, typical age 15–16), and 11,449 at wave 4 (2007, year 12, typical age 16–17, with an additional sample boost of 352 ethnic minority pupils). Uniquely, a facet of conscientiousness was administered at baseline. The school years included in the analyses were year 9 to year 12, corresponding roughly to US grades 7 through 10.
Associations were not explained by parental educational, income, or monitoring, regularity of seeing friends, minor psychiatric morbidity or birth weight. Given the complex survey design, sample weights were used in the reported analyses to obtain correct standard errors for the sampled population.
Publications
Hagger-Johnson, G., Bewick, B. M., Conner, M., O’Connor, D., and Shickle, D. (2012) ‘School-related conscientiousness, alcohol drinking, and cigarette smoking in a representative sample of English school pupils’, British Journal of Health Psychology, 17(3), pp. 644-665. doi: 10.1111/j.2044-8287.2011.02061.x Retrieved 2 September 2013 from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8287.2011.02061.x/pdf