Abstract
[Purpose]The purpose of this study was to identify the behavioral and psychological characteristics related to the onset and severity of type 2 diabetes mellitus among the community residents of a Japanese municipality. To explore the preventive population approach, the participants were clustered into groups based on their dietary habits.
[Methods]An anonymous self-administered questionnaire was distributed to the community residents who visited the health check-ups conducted in City X The questionnaire included dietary habits and associated personal relationships, psychological characteristics, shops and restaurants for groceries, stages of behavioral change, health information sources, actions with health check-up results, history of type 2 diabetes mellitus, and demographic characteristics. The patterns of behavioral and psychological characteristics were examined using descriptive statistics. The dietary habits were further classified by k-means cluster analysis. We performed chi-square test to investigate the characteristics of the clusters.
[Results] The final sample size included 2,302 participants (response rate = 43.9%). A k-means cluster analysis was conducted using the eight items that neither had ceiling effects nor high interitem correlations and were considered suitable for a population approach. Accordingly, the following three clusters were formulated: “frequent drinkers,” “meals comprising predominantly carbohydrates,” and “neither of them.” The “frequent drinkers” were mostly men, and who have “ever been told that their blood glucose level is high.”
[Conclusion] The dietary patterns of Japanese community residents were divided into three groups based on alcohol and carbohydrate consumption patterns. For a population-based approach, the segmentation of the target population based on such patterns would be effective.
