Polish Journal of Public Health

Original Article, Pol J Public Health 2020;130: 30-38

Marek Kos¹, Agnieszka Parfin¹, Bartłomiej Drop², Jolanta Herda¹, Krystian Wdowiak³,
Aleksandra Witas³, Justyna Drogoń³, Witold Wojdan3, Marta Kuszneruk¹

¹ Chair and Department of Public Health, Medical Univeisty of Lublin, Poland

² Department of Medical Informatics and Statistics with E-learning Lab, Uniwersity of Lublin, Poland

³ Students Scientific Association at Chair and Department of Public Health, Uniwersity of Lublin, Poland

10.2478/pjph-2020-0008

© 2020 Medical University of Lublin. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonComercial-No Derivs licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/)

Abstract

Introduction. The youth is a group particularly prone to follow trends concerning nutrition and lifestyle. When studying the habits of this age group, it is possible to evaluate its members’ knowledge concerning health behaviours, determine possible deficiencies and suggest appropriate educational programmes resulting in improvement of eating habits and physical activity, and consequently, in longer life in good health.

Aim. Lifestyle and eating habits of the high school students identification and analysis of those results in terms of future health condition and health education of the youth.

Material and methods. Anonymous survey study was conducted in electronic form among the students attending high schools and technical high schools all over Poland. The study was conducted with an authors’ survey questionnaire (Google form) filled in via the Internet. The questionnaire mainly included closed questions verifying habits connected with eating, physical activity, using stimulants, and metrics (age, sex, voivodeship, size of the place of living, type of school). Statistical analysis was made with the use of Statistica software.

Conclusions. The majority of youth has good habits concerning physical activity and beverages consumption, moreover, smoking is not a frequent habit in this group. What needs to be done, is to raise the youth’s awareness about appropriate carbohydrates consumption as well as about regularity and diversity of meals.

Keywords: lifestyle, high school youth, health education.