In BCM212 this semester, we are investigating the student experience at university.
For my research project I have decided that I want to research the habits of university students when it comes to health and fitness, and whether this relates to their academic performance.
This idea sparked from personal experience, as I noticed that when the Uni semester started up this year my motivation levels went down as I was settling back into routine, and found that the long days of uni didn’t allow me a lot of time to exercise or eat healthy and nutritious meals. It made me wonder if other students feel the same way, and how living a healthy lifestyle ranks in importance compared to other aspects of student life.
I am also interested in this topic as I did a Personal Interest Project in my final year of highschool which was essentially a 9-month long research endeavour to answer a hypothesis, and I researched holistic health and how it relates to other aspects of life. At the end of the project I found myself still curious about the benefits and downfalls of healthy eating and fitness in different walks of life, and this is the perfect opportunity to extend my research to university students.
Finding out the reasons why some students value a healthy lifestyle is the first thing I would need to look into, as it will help me to develop a stronger understanding into whether or not students believe health and exercise is a contributor to good grades, and also the reasons why other students may neglect their overall health, whether it be work commitments, a busy schedule or social pressures.
I made a twitter post with #mycuriosity where I first broached the subject and the fact that I was interested in how highly fellow students prioritise exercise and healthy eating amongst other aspects of their life.
I also would like to investigate the links between fitness and work ethic, and whether students prioritise exercise as it helps to clear the mind and increase focus on their studies. I will conduct this particular avenue of research through interviews, I think it will be interesting to find two people with opposing ideas about health and fitness and ask questions in regards to what helps them to concentrate and in what ways they think that exercise and healthy eating is or is not beneficial to their learning.
A 2019 article titles ‘Relationship Between Academic Stress, Physical Activity and Diet in University Students’ is an investigation into the ways that a student’s lifestyle can impact on their academic performance and stress levels. This article will be instrumental to my research as it contains scientific evidence and extensive research into student’s brains and whether academia and health have a correlation.
I have posted an initial survey to which i obtained some result, and I believe that this question is a good start on my research amongst my peers.
By conducting surveys on students from UOW, I hope to expand my research and narrow down my research question slightly by gathering multiple different standpoints. This will help me to narrow down the reasons people have behind whether or not they uphold a healthy lifestyle, and perhaps the ways that it affects a student’s ability to perform academically.
Elly
REFERENCES
2020. Behavioral Sciences | Free Full-Text | Relationship between Academic Stress, Physical Activity and Diet in University Students of Education. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/9/6/59. [Accessed 26 March 2020].
Elly Moore 