CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF STUDY
The word health cannot be separated from everyone in this world. Every person dreams of a perfect life and a healthy one. World Health Organization (WHO), in 1948, defined health as "a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity". To remain healthy, ones should take balanced diet, practice physical exercises, and
avoid unhealthy lifestyle.
1.2 PROBLEM STATEMENT
In this globalization era, people are busy chasing their own dreams to achieve success in their life and may neglect their responsibility towards their own health. So, they may forget to practice healthy lifestyle in their daily life. Many public health recommendations and clinical guidelines emphasize the importance of healthy lifestyles. Recent epidemiologic studies demonstrate that following a healthy lifestyle has substantial health benefits. A number of studies have supported factors that influence healthy lifestyle choices and behaviors in adolescence, including peers, parental healthy lifestyle behaviors, and the school environment (Luttikhuis et al., 2009). Barriers to healthy lifestyle behaviors in adolescents also have been well studied. A commonly reported barrier to physical activity in teens is lack of time or time constraints (Dwyer et al., 2006; O’dea, 2003; Sharma et al., 2005-2006). Besides that, healthy living includes taking the steps needed to optimize one's chances of surviving and thriving, like eating a healthy diet and exercising regularly. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is the easiest thing to do, provided you know the right tricks. Excess stress jolts your mind and you will see its spill-over effect in every aspect of your life. The key to counter daily pressures and stress is to lead a healthy life and develop healthy habits. A truly healthy person has a sound body and mind that is free of disease and infirmity. There are several tips to practice healthy lifestyle in our daily life such as go for a healthy diet, exercise regularly, take proper sleep, organize your activities, take care hygiene, take time-outs and relax. Nowadays, UMP students just focus only in their studies and may forget to apply healthy lifestyle in their daily life. They may not eat a balanced diet because lack of money, do not like foods that are cooked at the cafe or do not have enough time to eat. Furthermore, students maybe chasing their time or lack of time to eat so they use polystyrene to pack their food. On the other hand, they may also do not have enough time to sleep because busy studying, or just playing games. So this research is to trace whether UMP students do practice
healthy lifestyles.
1.3 RESEARCH OBJECTIVE
1.3.1 To find out the level of awareness of practicing healthy lifestyle among UMP students.
1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1. Do UMP students eat a balanced diet?
2. Do UMP students exercise regularly during their leisure time?
3. Do UMP students know the effects of unhealthy lifestyle?
1.5 DEFINITION OF TERMS
Awareness is the state of elementary or undifferentiated consciousness among the students. It is an alert cognitive state in which the students are aware of themselves and their situation.
Balanced diet is the overall dietary pattern of foods consumed that provide all the essential nutrients in the appropriate amounts to support life processes, such as growth in children without
promoting excess weight.
Healthy lifestyle is any activity of an individual, family or community, with the intention of improving or restoring health, or treating or preventing disease.
Exercise is any bodily activity that enhances or maintains physical fitness and overall health or wellness.
1.6 REVIEW OF METHODOLOGY
After several discussions, survey questionnaire was chose for better result and this instrument is easy to handle. The target respondents are 60 students University Malaysia Pahang (UMP) from varies faculties. The respondents are chose randomly. This questionnaire is to determine about awareness of balance diet, the awareness of exercise and awareness of unhealthy lifestyle among
UMP students.
1.7 ORGANIZATION OF SAMPLE
This report is a combination from five chapters which are introduction, review of literature, methodology, findings and discussions and conclusions and recommendations. For introduction, this chapter contains background of the study, problem statement, research objectives, research questions, definition of the term, review of methodology and organization of chapters. For review literature, it is all about the synthesis of articles that are related to the research question that about the awareness of balance diet, the awareness of exercise and awareness of unhealthy lifestyle. The third chapter is methodology and divided into five which are introduction, sampling which consists of participants who involved in the survey, data collection instruments, data analysis and conclusion. The fourth chapter is on the findings and discussions of the survey and for the results obtained. This chapter is divided into three parts which are introduction of the chapter, findings and discussion, and summary of the chapter. As for the last chapter which is the conclusion and recommendation is an overall on the study of the importance of healthy lifestyle and to provide measures for improvement.
CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF LITERATURE
2.1 INTRODUCTION
The review of literature of this research consists of three parts. In this literature review, the articles are synthesized and evaluated according to the research questions earlier. The first part is review on the reason that effect the balanced diet, second part is the reason that affects the level of exercise regularly during leisure time and third part is the effect of an unhealthy lifestyle.
2.2 THE AWARENESS OF HAVING A HEALTHY DIETARY
One of the ways to achieve a perfect life and a healthy one is through having a balanced diet. Eat a balanced diet means that we need to consume appropriate amounts on different types of nutrients. It is not just what we eat, but how we eat. Thus, the awareness of having a healthy dietary can be viewed through these several points that are gender, age and lastly the Body Mass Index (BMI).Women have been found to be more aware of diet and health issues and embrace dietary change to a greater degree than men (Hearty, McCarthy, Kearney & Gibney, 2006). Furthermore, the number of women with healthy weight is about 36.7 million compared to men that only 30.6 million that have a healthy weight (National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), 2000-2001). But Santos et al. (2008) argue with them. Age also plays an important role that can determine whether that person consumes balanced diet or not. According to Hearty et al. (2006), younger people with age below 51-64 years have negative attitudes toward healthy lifestyle. This may due to their maturity thus they do not realize the important of eating balanced diet. Lastly, the BMI of a person can generally describe whether he or she takes balanced diet or not. The body mass index (BMI) is an easily obtainable and relatively reliable indicator of overweight and obesity in adults ( Santos, Oliveira, Peters & Conde, 2008). In the word of James (2010), students with higher BMIs have been found to consume more vegetables, especially green leafy compared to lower BMI.
2.3 THE REASON THAT AFFECTS THE LEVELOF EXERCISE REGULARLY DURING LEISURE TIME
The most important reasons that affect the level of exercise during leisure time are awareness about health, environment and gender differences. According to McKenzie, et.al (2000), Verplanken and Melkevik (2008), Hortz and Petosa (2006) and Verkooijen, Nielsen and Kremers (2009) agreed that awareness about health affect the level of regularly exercise during leisure time. It shows that, the recent, rapid increase in serious illness, obesity and healthy lifestyle are an important urge for increased physical activity. Besides that, McKenzie, et.al (2000), Verplanken and Melkevik (2008), and Hortz and Petosa (2006) reveals that the level of exercise regularly affect by environment while Verkooijen, Nielsen and Kremers (2009) disagreed with it. They state that with providing enough equipments, facilities and organized more activity, provide physical education and instill physical exercise as habit are the environment that can enhance the level of practicing exercise regularly during leisure time. Furthermore, McKenzie, et.al (2000) and Verkooijen, Nielsen and Kremers (2009) stated that gender differences affect the level of awareness on exercise regularly during leisure time while Hortz and Petosa (2006) and Verplanken and Melkevik (2008) denied that. They show that most of males always exercise because of friendship and competition while female exercise to lose weight. The benefits of exercise regularly are prevent chronic diseases, improve mood, manage body weight, maintain fitness level, better sleep and for fun.
2.4 THE AWARENESS OF UNHEALTHY LIFESTYLE
Health has become salient issues in the past decade. Unhealthy lifestyle can bring many problems and diseases. To understand unhealthy lifestyle, it is important to be aware of reasons for an unhealthy lifestyle, gender differences and the effects of an unhealthy lifestyle. In the words of Kootena, et. al. (2007) there are things that can cause people to ignored healthy lifestyle. For balanced diet, adolescents who reported less social support from their father, more withdrawn behavior and less satisfaction with life reported lower levels of intake of fruit and vegetables. With regard to the cause of unhealthy lifestyle, Bonneta, et. al. (2005) stipulates that it is caused by anxiety and depression. Yanbaeva, et. al. (2007) observes that number of people that practice unhealthy lifestyle is different between male and female. Male are more likely to smoke. In the same way Bonneta, et. al (2005) also state that male more likely to practice unhealthy lifestyle. Their researches show that 50.7% are boys and 49.2% are girls. So male are more likely to practice unhealthy lifestyle than female. One of the examples for unhealthy lifestyle is smoking. According to the Yanbaeva, et. al. 2007) there are many bad effects of smoking to people. Smoke has an important extra pulmonary toxicity. The effects of smoking are injury in the lung, chronic diseases in organ systems, numerous widespread “systemic” disease and systemic oxidants-antioxidants imbalance. Same as Kootena, et. al. 2007) unhealthy lifestyle also bring bad effect. Unbalanced diet can contribute to emotional distress and addictive behaviors. In a conclusion, there are many things that can cause people to ignore the healthy lifestyle. There are also many things that can be categorized in unhealthy lifestyle. The research shows those males are more likely to practice unhealthy lifestyle and unhealthy lifestyle can bring many bad effects and can cause many diseases.
2.5 CONCLUSION
Many people always busy with their works and careers to achieve success thus they forgot about the importance of health to them. To gain a healthy life, people should take balanced diet, exercise regularly, and avoid any unhealthy lifestyle. Although money is important, people should realize that health cannot be bought by money.
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY
3.1 INTRODUCTION
All the steps that were taken in order to investigate the question will be explained and mentioned clearly.In this methodology, the first step was identified the subjects on students involved in this survey, the data collection instruments and analyzing data from questionnaire.
3.2 PARTICIPANTS
The participants for this research were the students of Universiti Malaysia Pahang itself. There were about 60 students who will be randomly selected from any faculty and any year.
3.3 DATA COLLECTION INSTRUMENTS
Data collection or survey questionnaire was chose for our research instruments. We prepared a questionnaire about survey on the awareness of UMP students on practicing healthy lifestyle. In the questionnaire, we ask 18 questions that is 3 dichotomous questions, 1 open-ended question and 14 multiple choice questions. This survey divide into four sections which that section A is for the target profile. Section B is to investigate whether UMP students eat a balanced diet. Section C is to know whether UMP students exercise regularly. Lastly, Section D is to investigate about the awareness of students on the effects of an unhealthy lifestyle.
3.4 CONCLUSION
The participants of this survey are 60 students from University Malaysia Pahang and will be selected randomly. We use a questionnaire to investigate about the awareness of UMP students on practicing healthy lifestyle. Then we will use Microsoft Excel to analyze our data.
CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS & DISCUSSIONS
4.1 INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, all the findings from the survey is analyzed and discussed. All the data collected will be presented in graphs and a summary also will be included. Those data will be explained by referring to the research question. Logical deduction for the trend is showed from the interpreted data.
4.2 PARTICIPANTS INFORMATION
This section indicates the respondents of the study on level of awareness of practicing healthy lifestyle among UMP students. This survey was conducted from first year students to the forth year students. The survey questionnaire was distributed to 6 different faculties’ students.
4.3 RESEARCH QUESTION 1: DO UMP STUDENTS EAT BALANCED DIET?
4.3.1 What can be described as a balanced diet.
Figure 4.3.1: Balanced diet definition.
The figure 1 illustrates balanced diet definition based on UMP’s students choose. According to the chart, most of the respondent had chose complete nutrition as the best definition for balanced diet and that is presented by 35 students while only 2 respondents had chose eat less during meal time and that is the lowest number. The other 15 students chose less calories and cholesterol and 8 students chose eat 3 times a day. From this graph, we can conclude that most students choose complete nutrition as the definition of healthy diet and it is also higher than the total number of students who choose the other three answer. This may linked to the food pyramid that is the guide for all people is consist of complete nutrition and may lead to healthy dietary.
4.3.2 How many times do UMP students eat a day.
Figure 4.3.2: Eating time of the UMP’s students.
The figure 2 shows the number of eating time a day that UMP students’ take. According to the graph, most of the students eat 2 times a day while only a little number of students eats 4 times a day. There are 22 students that eat 2 times a day while there are about 19 students and 15 students eat 3 and 4 times a day respectively. There are just 4 students that eat 5 times a day. The number of students that eat 2 times is higher than number of students that eat 4 and 5 times a day. It can be concluded that most of the students only eat during lunch and dinner. This is because the class time is from early in the morning to late evening and students only have time to eat during lunch and dinner.