Abstract:

Research has shown positive relationships between physical activity (PA) and quality of life (QoL). People who practice PA enjoy better health. PA influences physical health favourably. Nonetheless, the benefits of PA go beyond the physical into the psychological facet as well as into the social dimension of health and well-being.

Whereas a drop in PA is observed in the transition into university, less research exists on the role that work plays for PA among higher education students who (have to) combine their studies with work. In this regard, a question that deserves attention regarding students’ health-related activities is the relationship between QoL, PA, and work.

With this in mind, we asked:
a) how many hours a student works when they combine studies and work,
b) how many weekly minutes of PA students invest, and
c) if the two prior are related. Furthermore, we asked
d) if weekly minutes of PA would differ significantly between students who work and those who do not, and, lastly,
e) if QoL would be related with weekly minutes of PA and/or with weekly work hours.

Students who participated (N = 1040) were 482 men and 558 women, with a mean age of 24 years (SD = 2.70), of whom 503 worked and studied, and 537 only studied. The instrument included two short questionnaires, one on PA and one on work duties, and the brief 26-item World Health Organization Quality of Life Scale (WHOQOL-BREF), including four sub-scales assessing QoL in the physical, psychological, social, and environmental domains.

Findings revealed that among working students the mean number of work hours per week was 27 (SD = 13); 67 worked 20 hours per week, 128 worked 40, and 33 more than 40. Notwithstanding this robust workload, average weekly practice of PA was 3.19 days per week (SD = 1.43), 63.93 minutes per day (SD = 36.04), and 202.08 minutes per week (SD = 142.41). Most interestingly, working hours per week was not associated with time invested per week in physical practice. Furthermore, no difference in time invested in PA was observed between students who worked and students who did not work.

As regards QoL, students who studied and worked scored higher than their only-student counterparts in the physical and social QoL domains. In their case, number of weekly working hours was positively related with psychological and environmental QoL domains. Minutes per week of PA was positively related with all QoL domains; however, these positive relations were mainly due to students who worked, because among their only-student counterparts just the psychological domain was the only one related with minutes per week invested in PA.

The present study provides an exploration of the roles that different time investments, such as PA and work responsibilities, play in higher education students’ QoL. Findings suggest that combining work with studies may not be damaging to students’ well-being, but possibly the opposite. More hours of work was not related with less time doing PA, which hints that PA is deeply embedded in people’s habits, independent of how much time they want or have to invest in other activities. Lastly, PA could play a more important role in the QoL of students who combine work and study.

Keywords:

Physical activity, university students, higher education, work, quality of life.