Factors associated with physical activity level among undergraduate students in University Putra Malaysia

Modaresi, Parisa Sadat (2019) Factors associated with physical activity level among undergraduate students in University Putra Malaysia. [Project Paper] (Submitted)

Text lp FPSK3 2019 18.pdf Download (22MB)

Abstract

Physical activity is very important in maintaining health and quality of life. A cross sectional study was carried out to determine the physical activity level among students at Faculty of Medicine and Health Science, University Putra Malaysia (UPM). The respondents who fulfill the criteria (undergraduate students, aged 18-25 years old and Malaysian students) were recruited for this study. Assessment of physical activity was carried out using long version of the international Physical Activity Questionnaire (long IP AQ). A total of 150 respondents; which consist of Malay (82% ), Chinese ( 6%) and Indian (12%) were involved in this study that represented by female at 93.3% and male at 6.7%. The study result shows that most of the respondents had moderate (37.3%) to high (36.7%) physical activity. There were no relationship between sociodemographic gender (x2= 2.310, p>0.05), ethnicity (x2 =3.665, p>0.05), study program (x2=1.505, p>0.05), year of study (x2=14.521, p<0.05) and accommodation (x2=0.426, p>0.05) and physical activity were not significant. In conclusion, there was no significant relationship between sociodemographic characteristic while there is a significant association between year of study and physical activity. There was no significant relationship between health risk behavior with physical activity and also there was no significant association between psychosocial factors and physical activity. However, there was significant association between self-efficacy and pqysical activity level. There were several limitations in this study that could affect the study findings. Among them the cross-sectional study design unable to suggest any causal relationship between dependent and independent variables. Besides, there is a tendency to overestimate activity due to self-reporting and honesty of the respondents while answering the questionnaires. There are few recommendations for future study, if a researcher wants to determine physical activity level an individual, one should use some tools such as pedometer or accelerometer to assess objective method to increase the accuracy of results. Secondly, a researcher should make sure about the gender equality in selecting respondents, so that the researcher can interpret the data by gender accurately when theiy is balanced number of male and female .

Item Type:	Project Paper
Subjects:	R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine
Faculty:	Faculty of Medicine and Health Science
Depositing User:	Ms Norafizah Radzuan
Date Deposited:	21 May 2026 07:58
Last Modified:	21 May 2026 07:58
URI:	http://psaspb.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/2825

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