Many indicators of socioeconomic status used for adults are inappropriate for use in research on adolescents. In a school-based survey of 4079 Scottish schoolchildren using a self-completion questionnaire, over 20% of 11-15 year olds were unable to provide a substantive response on father's occupation. In contrast, indicators derived to construct a family affluence scale, which included car ownership, telephone ownership and the child having their own unshared bedroom, resulted in a 98% response rate; and 92% of children responded to a question on their weekly spending money. The intercorrelations between the conventional indicator of father's occupation and each family affluence and spending money were examined, and their associations with a range of health indicators and health behaviour measures compared. Father's occupational status and family affluence were moderately correlated and showed broadly similar patterns of association with the selected health measures although there were also some distinct differences. Child's spending money was only weakly correlated with father's occupation and showed rather different patterns of association with health measures. A case is made for the use of multiple indicators of socioeconomic status in adolescent health surveys, and it is argued that that the family affluence scale provides a useful and easily applied additional indicator to father's occupation or an alternative measure of socioeconomic background where occupational data are unavailable.

Objective: Several environmental factors influence adolescents' food habits and television (TV) viewing is thought to be one of these factors. The purpose of the present study was to describe sociodemographic differences in TV viewing and to examine associations of TV viewing with the consumption of sweets, soft drinks, fruit and vegetables in different countries. Methods: Data were collected from 162 305 young people completing the 2001/02 Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children survey, a World Health Organization cross-national study on health and health behaviours among 11-, 13-and 15-year-old school pupils. Analyses of variance were used to examine sociodemographic differences in TV viewing and logistic regression analyses to examine associations between TV viewing and food habits. Results: Large differences were found between countries in reported daily TV viewing time, from an average of 2.0 h in Switzerland to 3.7 h in Ukraine. The results indicate that those most likely to watch TV are boys, 13-year-olds and pupils of lower socioeconomic status. Those who watched more TV were more likely to consume sweets and soft drinks on a daily basis and less likely to consume fruit and vegetables daily, although the latter associations were not so apparent among Central and Eastern European countries. Conclusions: Given the high TV viewing rates among adolescents and the association with less healthy food options, many young people are at increased risk of overweight or obesity. Interventions to modify TV viewing behaviour are needed. The findings underscore the importance of tackling socio-economic differences.

differences in blood lipids, insulin, and leptin persist with increasing age these could be of public health importance. As the provision of school dinners has changed little in the past five years, 1 the differences could be of continuing relevance. However, the extent to which the differences reflect dissimilarities in the composition of school dinners and home provided school meals or other aspects of the dietary patterns and health behaviours of the two groups remains uncertain.Despite these uncertainties, we can draw two general conclusions. Firstly, the lower mean folate concentration seen among pupils eating school dinners suggests that new initiatives likely to increase the folate content of school dinners would be appropriate.5 Secondly, the other differences seen suggest that the average health status of pupils eating school dinners is no worse-and may actually be better-than that of pupils eating meals provided from home. This suggests that efforts to improve the diet and nutrition of British children and adolescents will need to extend beyond school dinners to tackle overall dietary patterns and their societal determinants if they are to be successful.We are grateful to the research team members and to the participating schools and pupils. We thank P M Ueland and H Refsum (department of pharmacology, University of Bergen) for the measurement of serum folate.

Scottish adolescent females, especially those from low SES groups, may be at particular risk of the adverse health effects associated with low levels of physical activity. Health promotion programmes to promote physical activity need to address these persistent gender and socio-economic inequalities.