Quality of Life, Physical Activity and Risk Behaviors: A Case Study in Mechanical Engineering Students

Abstract

This paper describes a transversal study involving 296 undergraduate mechanical engineering students, using a descriptive probabilistic approach. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the level of life quality and physical activity of the participants, comparing them to variables indicative of health risk factors. It was found that 70.6% of the study population evaluated their life quality standard as good or very good. With respect to their level of physical activity, 38.8% of the participants are physically inactive in their leisure time. As for the prevalence of risk factors, 3.7% of them belong to high risk groups: sedentary, overweight, and/or smokers. In addition, the hypothesis of a direct correlation between the level of physical fitness and life quality is confirmed.