The Relationship Between Risky Health Behaviors and Satisfaction with Life in University Students

Abstract

Objective: This study was conducted for the purpose of determining relationship between risky health behaviors and satisfaction with life in university students. Methods: The study was designed as a cross-sectional type. The sampling of the study was createdconsisted of 856 students accepting an education in the different departments of a university in the Mersin in the 2017-2018 spring semester. Three types of data collection tools (Student Introduction Form, Risky Health Behaviors scale (RHBS), and Life Satisfaction scale (LSS) were used in the collection of data in the study. Frequency, mean, standard deviation, t-test, ANOVA and the Pearson correlation analysis were used in the analyses. Results: The mean risky health behaviors scores (58.68±7.53) of students in our study were found to be high, and their mean satisfaction with life scores (16.75±4.57) were found to be moderate. The mean risky health behavior scores are high and mean life satisfaction scores are low for male students, those whose grade point averages are 2.51 and below, those whose parents education level is secondary education and below, those who live away from their family, those whose incomes are less than their expenses, and those whose general health status and interpersonal relationship level is "poor". Conclusion: Negative, good and moderate correlations were found between life satisfaction and the RHBS psychosocial and nutritional subdimensions, respectively., for the students. It was determined that as the mean total RHBS, psychosocial and nutrition sub-dimension scores of the students increased, their satisfaction with life decreased.

The Association between Subjective Well-Being and Risky Behaviours in University Students

“…This means that university students who exhibited a higher perception of well-being lived with their families, which, in turn, resulted in a lower level of risky behaviours. These results are consistent with the results provided by other studies, which also demonstrated the importance of family, namely family help and support, in the adoption of healthy behaviours (Aktaş et al, 2019;Allahverdipour et al, 2015;Griggs & Crawford, 2019).…”

“…The analysis of mediation demonstrated that having friends who use psychoactive substances played a significant mediating role in the correlation between subjective well-being and risky behaviours. These results had been expected, since the scientific evidence available shows that students with lower levels of subjective well-being have a much higher tendency to have friends who are active consumers of psychoactive substances compared with students with higher levels of subjective well-being and, therefore, are more susceptible to engage in unhealthy behaviours, regardless of their seriousness (Aktaş et al, 2019;Griggs & Crawford, 2019;Lai & Ma, 2016).…”

“…The analyses of correlation showed significantly negative correlations between subjective well-being and risk behaviours. Other studies had already revealed strong evidence of these correlations, specifically when addressing specific items that make up well-being, for example: happiness (Kye & Park, 2014;Peltzer et al, 2017;Piqueras et al, 2011;Richards et al, 2015), satisfaction with life (Aktaş et al, 2019;Grant et al, 2009) and perception of health (Ahn et al, 2014;Aktaş et al, 2019;Botha et al, 2019;Park & Kim, 2020;Piqueras et al, 2011). This indicates that increasing the levels of subjective well-being among university students may bring multiple benefits due to the fact that they are positively associated with healthy behaviours that could decrease the risk of developing diseases later in life.…”

Relaciones de las dificultades de regulación emocional y los factores de personalidad con la satisfacción vital de estudiantes universitarios

“…La satisfacción con la vida es un constructo que ha mostrado ser esencial en la comprensión del bienestar psicológico de las personas, de su salud psicológica y de la adaptación del individuo en diferentes contextos. Entre otras variables, recientemente se la ha relacionado con la autoestima (Nuñez et al, 2019;Ruiz et al, 2018), con comportamientos riesgosos en salud (Aktas et al, 2019), con el bienestar psicológico (Moreta et al, 2017), con la competencia emocional (López-Cassá et al, 2018) y con la confianza y el uso de medios sociales digitales de comunicación en estudiantes universitarios (Acun, 2020).…”