title: Trends in self-rated health in European and North-American adolescents from 2002 to 2010 in 32 countries.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Self-rated health (SRH) in adolescence is known to be associated with health outcomes in later life. We carried out a trend analysis on data coming from three waves of data collected in 32 countries (mostly European) from 2002 to 2010 coming from the Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children surveys.
  
  
  METHODS
  SRH in adolescents was assessed using a Likert scale (excellent, good, fair and poor). Responses were dichotomized into 'excellent' vs. 'rest'. Country, age and gender groups were compared based on the odds ratio of declaring excellent SRH in 2010 with respect to 2002 and 2006.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The trend for European adolescents indicates an improvement over the last decade, although, in the majority of countries, a higher proportion of adolescents rate their health as excellent during the period 2002-06 with respect to the second half of the decade (2006-10).Girls were found to constantly rate their health as poorer, compared to their male peers, in all countries. Age has also a very stable trend towards a decreasing rating of health with increasing age.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Decreased rating of health in the period 2006-10 may be a signal of the socio-economic difficulties of Europe in the last part of this decade.
authors: 1 Department of Public Health and Pediatrics, University of Torino, Torino, Italy franco.cavallo@unito.it.
authors: Franco
authors: F
authors: Cavallo
authors: 1 Department of Public Health and Pediatrics, University of Torino, Torino, Italy.
authors: Paola
authors: P
authors: Dalmasso
authors: 2 Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, and Psychosomatics, Research Unit Child Public Health, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany.
authors: Veronika
authors: V
authors: Ottová-Jordan
authors: 3 Head of Adolescent and Child Health Research, CRIPACC, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield UK.
authors: Fiona
authors: F
authors: Brooks
authors: 4 Institute of Mother and Child, Warsaw, Poland.
authors: Joanna
authors: J
authors: Mazur
authors: 5 Department of Health Sciences, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland.
authors: Raili
authors: R
authors: Välimaa
authors: 6 Department of Public Health and Epidemiology, RigaStradiņš University, Riga, Latvia.
authors: Inese
authors: I
authors: Gobina
authors: 7 University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal & CMDT/ Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Lisbon, Portugal.
authors: Margarida
authors: M
authors: Gaspar de Matos
authors: 2 Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, and Psychosomatics, Research Unit Child Public Health, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany.
authors: Ulrike
authors: U
authors: Raven-Sieberer
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior; D000067697:Adolescent Health / Q000639:trends*; D002648:Child; D005060:Europe; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009656:North America; D064890:Social Determinants of Health