A laryngeal disorders prediction model based on cluster analysis and regression analysis

This study provided the baseline for establishing policies for community health promotion programs to propose the clusters of multiple health risk factors and identify the risks of laryngeal disorders according to the clusters by using the national level survey representing the South Korean population. This study targeted 5941 people who completed the 5th Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The independent variables were age, sex, smoking, high-risk drinking, education level, occupation, household income, and self-reported voice problems. The identify cluster relationship with laryngeal disorders by conducting 2-way cluster analysis and multinomial logit analysis. The prevalence of laryngeal disorder was 6.7%. The results of analysis, 3 clusters were automatically extracted. Multinomial logistic regression analysis showed that sociodemographic factors, health risk behaviors, and health status clusters were significantly related to the risk of laryngeal disorders. The males who were smoking, high-risk drinking, college graduate and above, high income, and non-manual workers had a higher risk of laryngeal disorders than females who were non-smokers, non-drinkers, 60 years old and older, economically inactive, and high school graduate. The results of this study suggested that it may be effective to classify population according to sociodemographic and health behaviors and develop health education materials and health promotion program accordingly in order to prevent laryngeal disorders.