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The use of routine health check-ups and psychological factors—a neglected link. Evidence from a population-based study

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A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 30 January 2018

This article has been updated

Abstract

Aim

It is well known that the use of routine health check-ups is associated with socio-demographic and lifestyle factors. However, the link between psychological factors and the use of routine health check-ups has not been investigated intensively so far. Consequently, the purpose of this study was to determine the psychological factors associated with routine health check-ups.

Subjects and methods

Cross-sectional data were obtained from a population-based study (German Aging Survey) of individuals ≥40 years of age and residing in private households in Germany in the year 2014 (n = 7708). Screening data and data on psychological factors were collected in self-administered questionnaires. Multiple logistic regressions were used to identify psychological correlates of screening behavior, adjusted for socio-demographic, lifestyle and health-related variables.

Results

Of the participants, 65.4% used routine health check-ups regularly. After adjusting for various potential confounders, multiple logistic regressions showed that the use of routine health check-ups was positively associated with life satisfaction, positive affect, optimism, self-efficacy, self-esteem and self-regulation, whereas the outcome measure was not significantly associated with loneliness, negative affect and perceived stress. Furthermore, the outcome measure was positively associated with age, being married and living together with a spouse or partner, body mass index, being a non-daily smoker, drinking alcohol less than once a day and exercising. However, it was not associated with gender, income, number of physical illnesses or region.

Conclusions

The current study stresses the importance of the association between screening behavior and psychological factors. This may help to identify individuals at risk for underuse.

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Change history

  • 30 January 2018

    The journal had been advised to revise the title so that Clarivate Analytics can try to count the citations more accurately. There’s been confusion due to the existence of another journal with the same name.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Health Economics and Health Services Research, Hamburg Center for Health Economics, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany

    André Hajek, Jens-Oliver Bock & Hans-Helmut König

Authors
  1. André Hajek
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  2. Jens-Oliver Bock
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  3. Hans-Helmut König
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to André Hajek.

Ethics declarations

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Please note that an ethical statement for the DEAS study was not necessary because criteria for the need of an ethical statement were not met (risk for the respondents, lack of information about the aims of the study, examination of patients).

Informed consent

Prior to the interview, written informed consent was given by all study participants.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

The original version of this article was revised: Due to the existence of another journal with the same name, the Publisher has added a subtitle, “From Theory to Practice.” Effective as of January 2018, the new title of this Journal is Journal of Public Health: From Theory to Practice.

A correction to this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-017-0893-1.

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Hajek, A., Bock, JO. & König, HH. The use of routine health check-ups and psychological factors—a neglected link. Evidence from a population-based study. J Public Health 26, 137–144 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-017-0840-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-017-0840-1

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