Dietary Supplements: A Survey Use, Attitudes and Knowledge Among IIUM Kuantan Students

Abstract

Objectives: Dietary supplements have been recognized as products that are globally used, especially among university students due to its effectiveness and benefits towards health. In order to determine the efficiency of the supplements, the users must equip themselves with knowledge on the usage of dietary supplements. Hence, this study mainly aims to assess the usage, attitude and knowledge on dietary supplements among IIUM Kuantan students. Method: This study used a descriptive cross-sectional with stratified random sampling study among 349 undergraduate students at the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), Kuantan campus. Data was collected using online questionnaires and shared with students from IIUM Kuantan campus. The data was analyzed by using IBM Statistical Package Social Science (SPSS) version 25.0. Results: The overall prevalence of dietary supplements used by the students in the university was 31.8%. On the other hand, students show to have positive attitude and good knowledge, 70.8% and 84.0%, respectively. There was an association between course study and presence of illness with the level of attitudes based on Fisher exact test with p-values of <0.05 representing statistical significance. The same test was used resulting in age and BMI were associated with the level of knowledge. Conclusion: Prevalence of dietary supplements used was lower than other local findings and most of the students depict a good level of knowledge and positive attitudes towards dietary supplements. nevertheless, educational information regarding dietary supplements still needs to be provided to university students as the number of consumers keeps rising.