ABSTRACT
The assessment of lifestyle is an important issue in behavioral medicine and health psychology. First of all it is assumed that a “healthy” lifestyle is preventive for many chronic diseases, and so lifestyle is frequently used as an independent variable in (mainly epidemiological) studies. Secondly, lifestyle parameters are used as dependent variables in studies investigating its determinants of lifestyle or in studies evaluating prevention programs like the promotion of physical activity or quitting smoking. Another example of the importance of lifestyle parameters concerns their mediating role in studies relating personality characteristics or stressor exposure to health outcomes. Because in (epidemiological) research lifestyle generally includes physical activity, dietary intake, alcohol consumption, smoking, and caffeine consumption, this chapter will be focused on these lifestyle parameters.
