Gender differences in students’ health complaints: a survey in seven countries

Abstract

This study sought to determine the relationship among gender, quality of life and subjective health complaints in university students from six European countries and Turkey. In surveys conducted between 1998 and 2005, ten health complaints were measured in a sample of 5,317 university students by a symptom checklist with a self-administered questionnaire, which also contained questions on socio-demographic variables and a one-item quality of life measure. The gender-standardised prevalence was highest for nervousness and headache followed by back ache or neck/shoulder ache in most of the countries. Overall, students from Turkey and Spain reported the highest level of complaints and students from Denmark and Lithuania the lowest. Female students were significantly more likely to report health complaints. The gender difference was consistent across types of complaints and study sites, but varied in size. It was on average smallest in Turkey and strongest in the Slavic countries, Poland and Bulgaria. Among all health complaints, depressive moods had the strongest negative impact on quality of life. Although the results cannot be generalized to the general populations of the respective countries, the different profiles of reported complaints and gender differences should give rise to special interventions in these populations of young adults.