Evaluation of the relationship between physical activity participation and quality of life in university students

The purpose of this study is to determine the physical activity participation levels and quality of life levels of university students and to reveal the relationship between them. For this purpose, 300 students (148 female, 152 male) studying at Selçuk University during the 2023-2024 fall and spring semesters voluntarily participated in the study. A face-to-face survey was conducted for the research. The first part of the study included a Personal Information Form prepared by the researcher, the second part contained the International Physical Activity Questionnaire developed by (Craig et al. 2003) and adapted to Turkish by (Öztürk 2005), and the third part consisted of the Quality of Life Scale developed by WHO (1998) and adapted to Turkish by (Sevil 2015). The analysis of the data obtained was performed using the IBM SPSS-25 software package. Descriptive statistics, frequency, and percentage calculations were carried out to determine the personal information of the participants. The normality of the data was assessed using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. For comparative analysis between two groups, the Mann-Whitney U test was applied, and for more than two groups, the Kruskal-Wallis H test was used. The relationship between dependent and independent variables was determined by the Spearman's Rank-Order Correlation analysis. According to the research, the physical activity tendencies of university students, based on MET calculations, were mostly passive or moderate, while their quality of life parameters were found to be moderate or high. When evaluating the scales based on demographic variables, it was observed that physical activity and quality of life subdimensions significantly varied according to age, income, and class variables. However, no statistically significant relationship was found between physical activity levels and quality of life parameters.