Influence of Nutritional Knowledge on the Collegians’ Quality of Life

Abstract

Background: Nutrition is vital to the maintenance of health and prevention of disease. The burden of nutrition-related chronic diseases (such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and osteoporosis) and obesity is increasing rapidly world-wide. Many medical schools have been trying to improve their nutrition education curricula. However, there is evidence that medical professionals have serious deficits in their nutrition knowledge.Obesity is an issue for both children and adolescents in addition to adults. Those who are overweight or obese as children or adolescents are more prone to develop obesity and adult problems later in life.

Objectives: To   assess Nutritional Knowledge among Collegian Students at Diyala city, to evaluate relationship between nutritional knowledge, nutritional habits and quality of life with demographic variables.

Methodology: A “descriptive cross-sectional study design” has been carried out where using an evaluation approach from (25th December 2022 to 15th March 2023) at Diyala University to assess Influence of Nutritional Knowledge and Nutritional Habits on the Collegians’ Quality of Life.

sample size in this study (400) student was selected from the total College students at Diyala University according to [The minimum sample size was >collected based on "the margin of error of 5% and confidence level of 95%, the population size of 95%, and a response distribution of 50% , the recommended sample size would be (379). ["The number of questionnaires handed to the study subjects was 400 and the natured questionnaires were 400. So, the response rate was 100%.

The reliability result shows that Cronbach's Alpha was (r = [0.89] for Nutritional Knowledge section and r = [0.87] for Nutritional Habits section) which is considered an acceptable statistical match with the lowest level Limited by the reliability factor

Results: the nutritional knowledge among the three levels for collegian students at most (59.3%) were high with mean 68 and nutritional habits among the two levels for collegian students at most (86.3%) were healthy with mean 27.47, regarding the quality of life among collegian students were healthy with mean 3.09.

Conclusions: the results showed there were significant statistical positive correlations between nutritional knowledge with quality of life among collegian students at Diyala city.

Recommendations: the study recommendedto increase the nutritional understanding and eating habits of among collegian students, continuing education workshops and seminars are required. And Work on publishing a booklet containing nutritional information and a list of diet foods.