Health behaviour, body composition and motor performance in female university students

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The aims of this study were 1) to present the health awareness characteristic of the female students, 2) to characterize the differences by groups along the comparison of health behaviour, selected body composition attributes and cardio-respiratory performances variables. The two groups of the sample; one group consisted of students majoring in teacher training, social pedagogy, tourism and catering, the others are majors in recreation, health promotion courses (n=109); were selected from full-time female students at the University of West Hungary. In our research we used questionnaire (for investigate health behaviour and attitude), the Rockport Fitness Walking Test (for the measurement of cardio-respiratory performance in the sub-max zone to estimate relative VO2max) and InBody 720 bioelectrical impedance scanner (for analyzing body composition). For the analysis, descriptive statistics, one-way ANOVA and Mann Whitney U test were used testing significance at the 95% level of confidence. Differences between the group members’ health behaviour was found in only one examined dimension, namely physical activity. The results of other indicators (the hours of tiredness, state of health, habits of smoking and alcohol consumption) showed identical values. We have find significant difference between the groups in the following variables: frequency of physical activity, the muscle percentage and the cardio-respiratory performance. With the exception of one segment of body composition and the results of physical activity indicators; probably due to differences in physical activity; the groups can be viewed as strongly heterogeneous.