What is the Lifestyle Monitor?

The Lifestyle Monitor (LSM) is an integration of various lifestyle data collections, covering smoking, alcohol and drug use, physical activity and nutrition in the Netherlands. Lifestyle is defined as behaviour for which a relationship with good health or health problems has been established. The LSM consortium brings together various parties that focus on lifestyle in the Netherlands.

Data collection on lifestyle

The LSM aims to organise a nationally representative data collection on lifestyle in a coherent and efficient manner. Facts and figures from the LSM are intended to underpin policymaking in the field of lifestyle and health.

Which lifestyles are monitored?

The LSM covers lifestyle factors that have been found to be associated with health, such as smoking, alcohol and drug use, sexual health, physical activity, nutrition, healthy weight and accidents. In addition to lifestyle factors, the LSM also collects data on sociodemographic factors and health.

Partners

The partners in the LSM consortium include the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), the Netherlands Institute of Mental Health and Addiction (Trimbos instituut), Rutgers, Aidsfonds - Soa Aids Nederland, Dutch Consumer Safety (VeiligheidNL), the Netherlands Nutrition Centre, the Dutch Centre of Expertise on Health Disparities (Pharos), the Association of GGDs (Community Health Services) and GHOR (Regional Medical Emergency Preparedness and Planning) offices and Statistics Netherlands.

Lifestyle Monitor modules

Within the LSM, a distinction is made between the core (LSM-K) and the additional (LSM-A) modules:

• The LSM-K serves as a basis for lifestyle policies, containing the most important prevalence rates. These are collected (bi)annually to monitor trends over time. It includes data collections with a fixed base of questions, being the Health Survey among all citizens, the Dutch National School Survey (PEIL) and Health Behaviour in School-aged Children study (HBSC) for youth, and the Dutch National Food Consumption Survey (DNFCS) for nutrition. For adults, figures for all lifestyle factors, as mentioned above, are retrieved from the Health Survey (nutrition figures are also retrieved from the DNFCS). For youth, figures for physical activity, healthy weight, nutrition and accidents are retrieved from the Health Survey (nutrition figures are also retrieved from the DNFCS) and figures for smoking, alcohol use, drug use and sexual health are retrieved from the PEIL/HBSC.
• The LSM-A serves to collect additional prevalence rates of indicators that are needed less frequently than annually and to study underlying associations and explanatory variables. It includes multiple data collections, being the LSM-A Substance Use, the LSM-A Physical Activity and Accidents, the LSM-A Sexual Health in the Netherlands, the LSM-A Sex under the age of 25, the PEIL and the DNFCS.

An overview of the data collections per theme within the core and the additional modules of the Lifestyle Monitor can be found in Figure 1.

 PEIL = Dutch National School Survey, HBSC = Health Behaviour in School-aged Children study, DNFCS = Dutch National Food Consumption Survey

Sources of Lifestyle Monitor data

Availability of LSM-K data:

• Health Survey data are available from the Dutch national centre of expertise and repository for research data (Data Archiving and Networked Services, DANS) as Gezondheidsenquête 2014-2021 (Health Survey 2014–2021: Published datasets - EASY (knaw.nl) and from the remote access environment of Statistics Netherlands (Microdata: Conducting your own research (cbs.nl), but restrictions could apply to the availability of these data.
• PEIL data are available from the Trimbos Institute.
• HBSC data are available from Utrecht University.
• DNFCS data are available from the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (Data on request: Use DNFCS data).

Availability of LSM-A data:

• LSM-A Substance Use and LSM-A Physical Activity and Accidents data are available from the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment.
• LSM-A Sexual Health in the Netherlands and Sex under the age of 25 data are available from the Rutgers Foundation.
• PEIL data are available from the Trimbos Institute.
• DNFCS data are available from the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (Data on request: Use DNFCS data).

Please note: availability of LSM data collections may be subject to restrictions.