Physical Activity, Sedantery Behaviour and Quality of Life among University Students

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of physical activity (PA) and sedentary behavior (SB) on the quality of life of university students. The sample of the study was determined as undergraduate students in different departments of a foundation university in Ankara in April 2018 and 400 students were selected by random sampling method and accepted to participate in the study. The questionnaire consisted of the questions related to the socio-demographic characteristics, general health status and daily physical activity and sedentary behavior of the students and the Visual Analogue Scale. Research data were evaluated by descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney U test, Kruskal Wallis test and Spearman's correlation coefficient. Of the 400 university students surveyed, 67.3% were women, with a mean age of 20.49 ± 1.74 years. It was determined that the participants were physically active for 2 hours in a day and they were sedentary for an average of 9 hours. Quality of life scores of the participants were calculated as 65,59 ± 17,85. There was a statistically significant relationship between the quality of life scores of the university students and the duration of physically active (r = 0,772, p = 0,000), and the duration of sedentary behaviors (r = 0,772, p = 0,000). In this study, it was concluded that the duration of physical activity of university students is insufficient for a healthy life, it is important to reduce the time spent for sedentary behaviors especially for screening and social activities