Exploring Health Anxiety Risk Factors in Young Adults in the UK

This report investigates the risk factors of health anxiety among young adults (ages 18-25) in the UK. The study aims to explore and examine the major risk factors and their impact on health anxiety levels. The research employs a cross-sectional design, collecting data through a survey questionnaire from a sample of 84 participants selected using purposive sampling. The study focuses on four independent variables: age, experience of child abuse, level of stress, and tendency of wariness, along with the dependent variable of health anxiety levels. Data analysis will involve linear regression to assess the association between independent and dependent variables, using SPSS software. The expected outcome is that all four independent variables will show significant associations with health anxiety, allowing for a ranking of risk factors based on their level of influence. The report includes an extensive literature review, detailing the background of health anxiety, its prevalence among young adults, and the potential risk factors such as stress, child abuse, personality traits, and excessive internet use related to health concerns. Ethical considerations are also outlined, ensuring data privacy and security.

Running head: HEALTH ANXIETY AMONG THE YOUNG ADULTS
Risk Factors of Health Anxiety among the Young Adults in UK
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1HEALTH ANXIETY AMONG THE YOUNG ADULTS
1. Introduction
1.1 Background
Health anxiety is psychological condition where a person becomes highly obsessive and
anxious about his or her health problem, which is either negligible or completely absence in
his or her body. As per DSM-V Health Anxiety is identified as hypochondriasis in the ICD-
10 /11. According to Starcevic (2013), health anxiety usually starts at the adolescence or in
the phase of young adults. There are multiple, health and environmental risk factors that has
been identified in the cases of Health Anxiety. The focus of this paper is the health anxiety
issues among the young adults in United Kingdom.
1.2 Problem Statement and question
Currently there are many research available that has statistically proven the major risk factors
of the health anxiety within the adult population. On the other hand, most of the studies done
on the anxiety issues in adolescent and young adults are focused on either general anxiety
disorder or educational anxiety disorder. However, the practical evidence and knowledge
about Heath Anxiety and its risk factors in young adult population is extremely limited.
Therefore the research question is:
What are the major risk factors of health anxiety among young adults in UK?
1.3 Aim and objectives
According to the above problem and research question the aim of the study is to explore and
examine the major risk factors with their level of effectiveness on health anxiety among the
young adults in UK. Therefore, the objectives of the study is:

2HEALTH ANXIETY AMONG THE YOUNG ADULTS
 To explore the risk factors of health anxiety among the young adults
 To examine the level of association and of impact the risk factors on the level of
health anxiety
 To find out the most significant and least significant risk factors or predictors of
health anxiety among the young adults
2. Literature Review:
It is a very foundational literature review done by collecting data from various secondary
sources such as previous research papers, published reports, articles, theoretical books and
other in orders. The purpose of this review is to develop basic understanding of the research
variables to form appropriate methodology.
According to Williams and House (2014), health anxiety occurs when anyone perceived
sensation or changes in his or her body and interprets it as a symptoms of serious disease
where not significant cause of wary is present. The study indicates that this mental condition
can ranged from mild to severe level based on the level various medical, psychological and
personal histories of the individual. Initially this disorder was identified as a comorbid
symptoms of other kinds of anxiety disorders. However, as opined by Bailey and Well
(2016), health anxiety or hypochondriasis should be identified as an independent anxiety
disorder, because as per the study the symptoms of health anxiety can be also found in an
individual who does not have any current or previous history of anxiety disorder.
According to Asmundson and Fergus (2019), health anxiety often start in the adolescents and
young adults and without proper intervention it can last across entire lifetime. The study also
found that in this disorder a person often becomes very much worried about health problems
while developing a fear of death or becoming permanently paralysed because of a critical
disease. As studied by Tyrer (2019), the health anxiety could have multiple predictors or

3HEALTH ANXIETY AMONG THE YOUNG ADULTS
health risks such as major stress in life, history of having serious illness as a child and others.
It has been also found that health anxiety could be a result of child abuse. According to
Alberts et al., (2013), when a child sees one of his or her close family member as having mild
illness that turned into life-threatening disease, the experience can make the children
traumatised for longer period and it could be a cause of developing health anxiety disorder in
future. It has been also found that personality traits of an individual can make him or her
more worried about illness. A recent study conducted by Singh and Brown, (2014), shows
that excessive health related internet use could increase the symptoms and severity of the
health anxiety symptoms. Some comorbid mental issues such as obsessive compulsive
disorder, general anxiety disorder, somatic symptom disorder and others can increase the
complicacy of health anxiety to even further level.
3. Methodology:
3.1 Research Design
As per the purpose of this research this research needs to collect the data from the young
adults of UK regarding the identified risk factors and their current level and previous health
records of health anxiety problems. Therefore, this research does not need any long term
recruitment for specific intervention and for this same reason it is a non-experimental study.
In this research the data will be collected by involving the target population in a survey based
data collection process where both exposure and outcome related data will be collected.
Therefore this study is based on cross-sectional design. As per the purpose of this research
the association of risk factors with the health anxiety level will be measured by inferential
analysis. Therefore, the chosen research design is cross sectional inferential research design.
3.2 Population and Sampling

4HEALTH ANXIETY AMONG THE YOUNG ADULTS
As per the purpose of this data the target population of this research is the young adults of
UK who are within the age group of 18 to 25 years. Here the purposive sampling will be done
by selecting the samples who have considerable level of health anxiety or have any kind of
history of health anxiety. To select the sample size the A Power Primer method by Cohen
(1992), will be used. As this research is based on the inferential analysis where the risk
factors and their association with health anxiety will be measure the ES index will be:
f2= R2 / (J - R2), where the ES=0.02 for small, 0.15 for medium and 0.35 for large
Since, this study will be done on a single group, df=N-K-1 where, N is the number of
population and K is the number of independent variables. Here, the number of independent
variables are 4 and therefore, df= N-5
According to Sunderland, Newby and Andrews (2013), the effect size for different predictors,
risk factors and their association with Health Anxiety is medium. Therefore here ES will be
small and the alpha value will be 0.05.
A Power Primer sample size selection table is:

5HEALTH ANXIETY AMONG THE YOUNG ADULTS
Hence, for the above conditions, the chosen sample size is 84. Therefore, 84 participants will
be recruited for survey.
3.3 Data collection procedure
The data collection procedures will be done through survey questionnaire tools. In this
research the data will be collected for 4 independent variable and 1 dependent variables. In
the following table the data collection process is presented.
Variable Factors Tools Measures
Independent Age Survey questionnaire Age in years
Experience of child abuse Child abuse
questionnaire
Scores
Level of stress in life Stress level
assessment
questionnaire
Scores
Tendency of wariness Wariness
questionnaire
Scores
Dependent Level of Health Anxiety Health Anxiety
questionnaire
Scores
The data collection has been done through online survey by sharing the link to the target
population through social media pages and profiles.
3.5 Data analysis procedure
As per the research purpose, in this research the association of the independent variables with
the dependent variables should be measured. As per the data collection the measures of all
variables are scores. Both scores and the age of the participants are ordinal with no finite
limitation. Therefore, for this analysis the liner regression analysis will be used where each
independent variables will be analysed with the dependent variables individually. The R
squire values and the significant p-values will be considered for assessment of significant

6HEALTH ANXIETY AMONG THE YOUNG ADULTS
association. Here the probability testing or alpha value will be 0.05. For data analysis, SPSS
Statistical analysis software will be used.
3.6 Ethical considerations
This research process will not have any health impact on the participants. The data collection
and handling will be done under the data privacy and security regulation. The ethical
consideration from is attached with this proposal, for more details.
4. Expected Outcomes:
It can be expected the all 4 independent variables will show significant association with the
health anxiety. However, the level of association will be different and from that level of
association values the risk factors will be ranked from most significant risk fact to least
significant risk factor.

7HEALTH ANXIETY AMONG THE YOUNG ADULTS
References:
Alberts, N. M., Hadjistavropoulos, H. D., Jones, S. L., & Sharpe, D. (2013). The Short Health
Anxiety Inventory: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Anxiety
Disorders, 27(1), 68-78.
Asmundson, G. J., & Fergus, T. A. (2019). The Concept of Health Anxiety. In The
Clinician's Guide to Treating Health Anxiety (pp. 1-18). Academic Press.
Bailey, R., & Wells, A. (2016). The contribution of metacognitive beliefs and dysfunctional
illness beliefs in predicting health anxiety: An evaluation of the metacognitive versus
the cognitive models. Clinical Psychologist, 20(3), 129-137.
Cohen, J. (1992). Quantitative methods in psychology: A power primer. Psychol. Bull., 112,
1155-1159.
Singh, K., & Brown, R. J. (2014). Health-related Internet habits and health anxiety in
university students. Anxiety, Stress, & Coping, 27(5), 542-554.
Starcevic, V. (2013). Hypochondriasis and health anxiety: conceptual challenges. The British
Journal of Psychiatry, 202(1), 7-8.
Sunderland, M., Newby, J. M., & Andrews, G. (2013). Health anxiety in Australia:
prevalence, comorbidity, disability and service use. The British Journal of
Psychiatry, 202(1), 56-61.
Tyrer, H. (2019). Dealing with Health Anxiety: The Physician’s Experience. In The
Clinician's Guide to Treating Health Anxiety (pp. 155-163). Academic Press.
Williams, C. and House, A., 2014. Cognitive behaviour therapy for health
anxiety. Lancet, 383(9913), pp.190-191.