Overweightness and obesity prevalence among university students in 2015-2016 educational season

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to find out the obesity prevalence among university students. In addition to the main purpose, another aims of this study is to determine the individual features of participants related to obesity such as gender, age, being an obese in family and doing physical activity.This study was performed on university students from five different faculties of Çukurova University in 2015-2016 educational season. In this study, 894 volunteer students accepted for attending to the research. The mean age of female participants was 21.39±2.53 years. However, mean of males was 22.28±2.73 years. Descriptive study design and causal comparative methods were used. The individual information form created by the researcher was used to determine the demographic characteristics of the participants. BMI was analyzed both quantitative and categorical ways in this study. WHO’s classification method was used for categorizing of BMI. All findings in the study were summarized by descriptive statistical methods such as mean, standard deviation, frequency, percentage, etc. The independent sample T test, the ANOVA test, Pearson correlation test and chi-square test were used. In all analyzes, significance level was accepted as p <0.05.The mean of the BMI was calculated as 22.40±3.49 kg/m2. There was a statistically significant difference between the mean BMI of males (23.80±3.40 kg/m2) and female participants (21,01±2,99 kg/m2, t(-13,043)=892, p<0.05). Also, it was found statically significant difference among BMI classification groups for gender (obesity rate of male: 4.9% ; female:1.1%) , x2(df=3, n=894)=101.21, p<0.05. These results have indicated that the rate of obesity among university students is lower than normal population in Turkey. At the same time the findings of this study have shown similar characteristics with the university students’ of other countries reported by previous studies.In conclusion, it should be taken some measures for reducing overweightness and obesity such as increasing physical activity possibilities for people in all condition by local and central Governments, increasing the number of hours of physical education and sports lessons in schools as much as possible and the processing of these courses must be inspected strongly, more strict measures taken by the government to reduce obesity rates in society, informing and awareness of community on obesity, informing adequate and balanced nutrition by using the all media devices and facilities.