PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AND DIETARY HABITS AMONG SECOND YEAR STUDENTS OF THE SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, UNIVERSITY OF BELGRADE

The aim of this study was to investigate the physical activity and dietary habits of second year medical students of the School of Medicine, University of Belgrade. The level of physical activity and dietary habits were also investigated according to other factors: gender, sports activity before and after attending college and students’ self-assessment related to their physical activity level. All second year medical students (490 students: 155 male and 355 female) were asked to participate in the study by filling out questionnaires during one week in the 2016/17 school year. They filled out a demographic questionnaire, a shorter version of International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) as well as a food frequency questionnaire comprising 13 indicator variables. The Mann-Whitney U test was used to test the overall differences between male and female students, while a Correlation Analysis was investigated using the Spearman correlation coefficient. There is a statistically significant difference in sport habits between both male and female students, before and after enrolling in college. The Spearman correlation coefficient analysis showed that there is a moderate positive correlation between the levels of physical activity calculated from the IPAQ questionnaire with sports activity habits of the students after enrolling in college (0.344) as well as with self-assessment of the level of physical activity by the students (0.440). Second year medical students have good dietary habits that could be responsible for their adequate body composition.