Journal of Advances in Medical Education & Professionalism

Are healthy lifestyle behaviors positively associated with the academic achievement of the university students?

Document Type : Short Communication

Authors

FATEMEH BAKOUEI 1
SHABNAM OMIDVAR 2
SEYED JALIL SEYEDI-ANDI 2
SAREH BAKOUEI 3

1 Infertility and Health Reproductive Research Center, Health Research Institute, Babol University of Medical Sciences, Babol, Iran

2 Social Determinants of Health Research Center, Health Research Institute,Babol University of Medical Sciences, Babol, Iran

3 Department of Midwifery, Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, Qom University of Medical Sciences, Qom, Iran

https://doi.org/10.30476/jamp.2019.74888.
Abstract
Introduction: Universally, the number of students attending the university education is high and increasing. The future of academic graduates is affected by their academic achievement. The purpose of the research was to assess the correlation among academic achievement and healthy lifestyle behaviors in university students.
Methods: This cross-sectional research was conducted on 262 university students studying in the selected faculties of Babol University of Medical Sciences based on multi stage sampling technique. The students were categorized to low and high academic achievement groups according to grade point average (GPA) score at the end of the semesters. The health-promoting lifestyle profile with six domains was applied to determine healthy lifestyle behaviors. To investigate the adjusted correlation
among the health promoting lifestyle’s domains and academic achievement, the multi-variable logistic regression was used. 
Results: The average age of the university students was 21.36 ± 2.28 years. According to the results, some domains of healthy lifestyle behaviors between the low and the high academic
achievement groups were different significantly. The results demonstrated that the spiritual growth (the only domain of healthy lifestyle behaviors) (P=0.002) and living situation (P=0.043) were
significant factors affecting academic achievement.
Conclusion: The findings suggest that the public health and education professionals should try to improve the students’ academic achievement through holding periodic training workshops to promote the their spiritual growth and also consider more quotas for native students to the universities.

Keywords

Healthy lifestyle
Behaviors
Academic achievement
Students
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Journal of Advances in Medical Education & Professionalism
Volume 7, Issue 4
October 2019
Pages 224-229

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