Investigation of the relationship between the physical activity participation level of high school students and nutrition level and life quality

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether there is a differentiation in the nutrition habits and health quality in high school female and male students depending on the gender and participation level in physical activities. A total of 855 high school students - 647 female and 208 male having a mean of age 16,11 and 16,02 respectively- are participated in our research in Çorum City center. In this study; Turkish version of the World Health Organization Quality of Life Instrument, Exercise Stages of Change Questionnaire (ESOCQ) and Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire (TFEQ) are applied respectively. Since the data is not normally distributed, Mann Whitney U Test is used to compare groups and Spearman Ordered Correlation Coefficient is calculated to identify the relationship between in-group variables. The findings of this study show that male participants participate in physical activity at a higher rate than females. Although the body mass index scores of females and males are not different in a significant level, higher obesity values are observed in females. Except life quality general health, physical and environment and nutrition habit, hunger sensitivity sub-dimensions, there are significant differences depending on the gender in other variables. In females, only the sedentaries' conscious restriction score are higher significantly than who does physical activities regularly; where in males, in the life quality general health and psychological sub-dimensions, the ones who do physical activities regularly has higher statistical means than the sedentaries. While there exists a relationship between the participation in physical activity and general health and psychology health sub-dimensions in males, this relationship exists in a significant level only with the nutrition habit conscious restriction sub-dimensions in females. Keywords: Physical activity, Life quality, Nutrition habits, High school students.