Effects of Lifestyle on the Risk of Accident among Adolescents in Tehran

Lifestyles are collective patterns of activities and behaviors based on choices from all options that are available to actors according to structural constrains. Health behavior, like other categories of social behaviors, is influenced by the interplay or dialectical relationship between agency and structure. While agency is the capacity of social actors to choose their behavior, structure refers to regulatory bodies in social interaction, systematic social relationship, and access to resources that constrain or give power to choices. From William Cockerham’s standpoint, structural factors such as age, gender, occupational position, socioeconomic status (SES) can widely control life choices of social actors. Inspired from Cockerham, and in an endeavor to take out and define multiple dimensions of the notion of lifestyle, this paper has drawn on factor analysis strategy of data analysis, based on a sample (n=450) of adolescents living in two districts of the Tehran metropolis. The recruited adolescents into sample were chosen using a PPS cluster sampling strategy. The result of factor analysis shows that the notion of lifestyle has eight underlying variables or dimensions. These dimensions are: Risky driving, passion for driving, beauty driven pleasures, cultural consumption, interest in social activities, religiosity, alcoholism (alcohol abuse), and an interest in physical activities. Out of the extracted dimensions or factors for lifestyle, risky driving, alcohol abuse and an interest in physical activities have sequentially had the most significant effects on the risk of accident. Moreover, significant relationships exist between these dimensions of lifestyle and negative (unsafe) aspects of one’s driving lifestyle.