ATTITUDES OF STUDENTS TO PHYSICAL ACTIVITY
Abstract
The aim of the study was to reveal pattern of physical activity among students and to investigate which types of physical activity are dominantly present among the students. Also, the aim was to investigate the attitudes of students towards the importance of physical activity as well as to determine the reasons for the possible lack of physical activity.
The research was conducted at the Students’ Center Kragujevac and included 403 students from six different faculties of the University of Kragujevac. The data were collected by a questionnaire designed for the purpose of this investigation, made up of two parts. After demographic data, the first part of the questionnaire consisted of questions about the pattern of physical activity, and the second part contained questions related to attitudes about physical activity. A statistical analysis was performed using SPSS version 21.00.
Based on the IPAQ directives for scoring and criteria for classification of physical activity 23.3% of students were physically inactive, 62.5% were classified as moderate and 14.2% fell in the category of high physical activity. When it comes to attitudes of the respondents, 56.6% of the students’ population did not consider to engage in regular physical activity or planned to start it in the future. What makes most of the respondents (60.3%) to be more physically active is knowledge about importance of physical activity for health. There are many reasons for insufficient physical activity but the majority of (87.8%) of the students stressed lack of time as a crucial reason.
Majority of the interviewed students of University of Kragujevac were aware of importance which physical activity has on health, but they also for different reasons (from which lack of time was the most dominant) did not engage enough in physical activities.
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