Determination of body perception and obesity awareness of nursing students

ABSTRACT Obesity and body image are concepts that are thought to be influenced by each other in the form of cause and effect relationship and should be examined together. This work; This is a descriptive study designed to determine obesity awareness and body perceptions of nurse students. The population of the study consisted of all students studying at the Nursing Department of the Faculty of Health Sciences of Çukurova University, and the sample consisted of 500 students who continued active education in the 2019-2020 spring semester and volunteered to participate in the study. The data were collected using the "Student Identification Form, "Obesity Awareness Scale" and "Body Perception Scale", which was created by the researcher by scanning the literature. Frequency, descriptive statistics, Independent Sample-t test, Spearman correlation test, ANOVA, Kruskal-Wallis H test, Mann-Whitney U tests were used to evaluate the data. İn the research; Obesity awareness scale average scores of the students were found to be moderate with 59.86±8.96, body perception scale average scores were 148.38±26.79 and body perception levels were found to be at a good level. As a result, the increase in obesity awareness of nursing students also increases their body perceptions positively. It is evaluated that the awareness of obesity and being satisfied with the body of nursing students who are candidates to become health professionals in the future will ensure the development of these two concepts in the individuals they care for. In addition, it is thought that they will contribute to the increase of social awareness and prevention of obesity by educating the people they care about on obesity awareness and body image. For this reason, in order to increase the awareness of obesity and body perception of nursing students, it can be suggested that nutrition education, which is given only one half-term in the second year, should be planned to cover more semesters, healthy life lessons should be included in compulsory courses and physical activity opportunities should be increased.