Usual physical activity of undergraduate students in the health area of a higher education institution in the sertão da Paraiba

Abstract

Considering that physical activity is an important component in people's daily lives, as it provides psychological, physical, motor and cognitive health benefits, regardless of age and gender. The objective is to verify the usual level of physical activity of undergraduate students in the health area at a higher education institution in the Sertão da Paraíba. To this end, this is field research, exploratory and with a quantitative approach. 103 students from Physical Education, Nutrition, Psychology, Medicine and Physiotherapy courses participated in the study and the sample consisted of 103 students, aged between 18 and 40 years. As an instrument, a sociodemographic questionnaire was used, as well as the Habitual Physical Activity Questionnaire. The collected data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) program. The result was that 47.6% are studying Physical Education; 14.6% Medicine; 11.7% Physiotherapy; 15.5% Psychology and 10.7% Nutrition. It can be seen that the most active course is Physical Education with a Total Habitual Physical Activity of 6.95, followed by Medicine (5.44), Psychology (5.36), Nutrition (5.27), and the least active course active was Physiotherapy with an average of 4.7. In general, health students had an average AFH level of 5.54. The results allow us to conclude that students are at an active level of AFH and that students on the Physical Education course are more active and those on the Physiotherapy course less so.