1.5 Section summary

So far in this course, you’ve critically considered the term ‘lifestyle’. You started by looking at yourself. Then you moved on to consider quantitative methods for understanding our lifestyles and wellbeing. This didn’t go into too much detail, only giving a flavour of what quantitative methods can tell us. In public health, the main application for quantitative research is that it can tell us about whole populations. For example, it could tell us about the public health of all pregnant women, or general statistics about obesity. Then you looked at the BMI as a measurement, finding that it has weaknesses. If you are an athlete, for example, it might not be a particularly good measure for overall health; at the same time, it is a rough tool that can be useful for analysing a whole population.