Healthy lifestyle behavior of candidates of natural sciences: Aksaray University example

In this study, it was aimed to raise awareness by identifying healthy lifestyles of science teacher candidates who will explain the healthy life topics in the science curriculum. In addition, nursing and physical education teacher candidates who take health courses in undergraduate education programs in terms of healthy lifestyle behaviors were included in the research and a comparison was made between these undergraduate programs. 501 students studying at a state university in the 2018-2019 academic year participated in the research. The research was carried out with the quantitative method and is in the descriptive survey model. A structured questionnaire consisting of two parts was used as a data collection tool. The first part includes the questions about demographic characteristics, and the second part includes the questions of the Healthy Lifestyle Behaviors Scale II, which was developed by Walker et al. in 1987. SPSS was used in the analysis of the data. Descriptive statistics such as percentage, frequency, mean and standard deviation, and multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) were used to evaluate the data. According to the research results; It was determined that the healthy lifestyle behaviors of the participants were at a moderate level. In the gender variable, there was a significant difference in favor of men in the physical activity and exercise sub-dimension, in favor of women in interpersonal interaction, in favor of upper-class students in the grade level variable, and in favor of those staying at home in the variable of accommodation. It has been observed that there are significant differences in different sub-dimensions in terms of the program variable studied. It has been determined that some demographic variables are determinative on healthy lifestyle behaviors.