Quality of life and eating attitudes of health care students

Observational, cross-sectional, and quantitative study performed in a federal university. Three questionnaires were used for data collection: a socio-demographic and academic, the WHOQOL-BREF and the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26).

Result:

399 students participated in this study, most women, average age of 22 years, average scores of EAT-26 of 15.12 and quality-of-life averages above 60 points in all domains. The students of the undergraduate program in Nutrition presented more inappropriate eating attitudes than other health care students; as the age evolves, vulnerability to inadequate eating attitudes increases; and the family income influenced negatively the quality of life in Physical and Social domains.

Conclusions:

Inadequate eating attitude diminishes the quality of life of health care students in all domains of the WHOOQOL-BREF.

Descriptors:
Quality of Life; Eating Behavior; Eating and Food Intake Disorders; Health Care Students; Universities

Variables	Participants
Variables	n	%
Undergraduate program
Biomedicine	55	13.8
Physical Education	21	5.3
Nursing	77	19.3
Physical Therapy	62	15.5
Medicine	118	29.6
Nutrition	35	8.8
Occupational Therapy	31	7.8
Total	399	100

Variables	Scores of the EAT-26
Variables	R	p value
Age	0.145	0.004^* * Pearson's correlation coefficient;
Household income	0.048	0.343^ Spearman's correlation coefficient
Period	0.229	< 0.001^ Spearman's correlation coefficient

WHOQOL-BREF Domains	Minimum	Maximum	Median	Mean	Standard Deviation	α^* * Measure of internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha).
Physical	14.29	100.00	67.85	65.82	15.01	0.78
Psychological	8.33	95.93	62.50	63.27	14.93	0.77
Social	8.33	100.00	75.00	71.30	17.78	0.70
Environment	28.13	96.88	62.50	62.44	12.81	0.72

Variables	Scores of the EAT-26
Variables	β	p
Sex	0.08	0.09
Undergraduate program	0.10	0.03
Age	0.14	0.004
Monthly household income	-0.10	0.04

Variables	Physical Domain		Psychological Domain		Social Domain		Environment Domain
Variables	β	p	β	p	β	p	β	p
Sex	-0.03	0.58	-0.01	0.78	0.08	0.09	0.06	0.21
Age	0.001	0.98	0.02	0.56	-0.06	0.22	0.03	0.50
Household income	0.13	0.009	0.07	0.16	0.10	0.03	0.21	0.67
EAT-26	-0.16	0.001	-0.16	0.002	-0.15	0.002	-0.13	0.008

Associação Brasileira de Enfermagem SGA Norte Quadra 603 Conj. "B" - Av. L2 Norte 70830-102 Brasília, DF, Brasil, Tel.: (55 61) 3226-0653, Fax: (55 61) 3225-4473 - Brasília - DF - Brazil
E-mail: reben@abennacional.org.br

Acompanhe os números deste periódico no seu leitor de RSS

[1] CORRESPONDING AUTHOR: Daniela Galdino Costa E-mail: danielagaldino@yahoo.com.br