This study reports on comparisons of health and social outcomes among monks, prisoners, and other members of a cohort of Open University adults in Thailand. These are very unique population subgroups enrolled in long-distance learning who participated in the Thai Health-Risk Transition study in 2005. Restricted analyses for men aged 20–39 years (711 monks, 195 prisoners, and 29,713 other cohort members) were reported on here. Monks were more likely to be younger, to have lower incomes, and to reside in rural Northeastern parts of Thailand. Prisoners were slightly older and the majority came from rural areas although they are currently residing in detention facilities in provincial urban areas. However, it was notable that prisoners were substantially less likely to have lived in rural areas as children when compared to monks or other cohort members. Monks were notably more likely to enroll in political science (which includes local administration) and educational studies, while prisoners were more likely to be enrolled in law, management sciences, and agriculture.
Another social outcome reported in Table 3 was the importance of religion, spirituality practices, and karma. Monks scored highest compared to other groups for all three questions. When prisoners are compared with other cohort members, very slight differences in mean scores were found across the three questions (7.1% vs. 7.4%; 5.1% vs. 4.9%; and 6.8% vs. 7.1%).