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Physical activity level in students of business administration and medicine of ESPOCH

Abstract:

Introduction: When establishing physical activity levels, it is necessary to know the degree of energy expenditure produced by body movement, an indicator that allows establishing the sedentary lifestyle index and, therefore, probabilistically establishing various related health indicators. Objective: To determine the level of physical activity among students of the Business Administration and Medicine career, establishing a comparison between two assessment tests, one theoretical and one practical. Methods: Based on simple random sampling, a representative sample of students of Business Administration (AE: 70 subjects) and Medicine (M: 70 subjects) of the Higher Polytechnic School of Chimborazo (ESPOCH) was selected. The International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) was previously applied, subsequently evaluating the students who achieved a level of physical activity of "Moderate" (43 subjects) and "High" (19 subjects) with the Ruffier test. Results: The IPAQ showed a low level of physical activity in the university students investigated (55.71%), while the self-rated of moderate and high level reached 44.29% (62 subjects). The application of the Ruffier test showed that 13 self-rated moderate and high with the IPAQ had an insufficient level of cardiac recovery in the short term; Therefore, the indicator before the survey is lower. Between the levels of physical activity when comparing the two university careers there were significant differences (p = 0.026), being better in the students of AE. Conclusions: Given the existence of a low rate of physical activity in university students, with emphasis on medical students, it is necessary to establish countermeasures that decrease the sedentarism index in the researched university, attending to the needs and particularities of each independent sample. studied.