An Investigation on Self-Rated Health of Adolescent Students and Influencing Factors From Sichuan, China

To investigate adolescent students' self-rated health status and to identify the influencing factors that affect students' health status. A stratified cluster sampling method and the Self-assessed General Health Questionnaires were used to enroll 503 adolescent students from Sichuan Province, Southwest part of China. Most adolescent students perceived their self-rated health as “Fair” (29.4%), “Good” (52.1%), or “Very Good” (16.3%). Regarding the sleep quality, most of them rated them as “Fair” (24.9%), “Good” (43.1%), or “Very Good” (19.7%), but 59.7% students reported to sleep less than 8 hours a day, even a few reported to sleep less than 6 hours (4.4%) or more than 9 hours (9.7%). A considerable number of students (41.1%) reported that they “Never” or just “Occasionally” participated in appropriate sports or exercises. As to the dietary habit, a significant number of students (15.7%) reported that they “Never” or “Occasionally” have breakfast. Students from different administrative levels of schools (municipal level, county level, and township level) rated differently (P < 0.05) in terms of their self-rated health, Health Behaviors, Sleeping, Dietary behaviors, Safety Awareness, and Drinking and Smoking behaviors. In general, Chinese teenage students perceived their own health status as fairly good. However, attention needs to be paid to health problems of some of the students, such as lack of sleep and exercise and inadequate dietary habits, etc. More concerns need to be addressed to students from different administrative levels of schools, and strategies should be put forward accordingly.