Lifestyles in Postgraduate Students at the Universidad Santo Tomás – Colombia, a View from the Integral Formation

Abstract

. The objective of this investigation was identifying the lifestyles of the postgraduate students of the Universidad Santo Tomás - Colombia. For the WHO (2013), lifestyles are considered as a general form of human being's life centered in the interaction of life conditions and individual patterns of behavior. This research is a quantitative descriptive interpretative study. The sample was confirmed by 186 postgraduate students, of which 53% were men (n=99) and 47% were women (n=87), with age 35.5±14.5 years and who studied the academic space of Humanism, Society and Ethics during the first semester of 2020. A self-administration questionnaire with 15 questions on the Likert Scale proposed by Nahas (2013) was used to evaluate nutritional factors, physical activity, preventive behavior, social relations, and stress control. The results showed a negative lifestyle index is evidenced by postgraduate students in the variables of nutritional factors, physical activity and preventive behavior, which are part of the individual behaviors involved in daily life; on the other hand, a positive lifestyle index is presented in the variables of social relations and stress control, where students feel satisfied with their friendships and try to set aside time to relax. It is necessary to offer spaces through the university welfare that offer to the postgraduate students, programs of promotion and prevention of the health; likewise, to promote the conscience of a healthy lifestyle within the classes that are offered in postgraduate courses, so that these have a direct incidence in the integral formation of the students.