The research questions of the current study were formulated as
follows:
1. What is the level of physical fitness of nursing students in a university
in Thailand?
2. What are the relationships between personal variables (age, marital
status, perception of family income, study programme, grade point
average, body mass index and satisfaction with body weight) and
perceived physical health, physical fitness and psychological health?
3. What are the relationships between health behaviours (exercise, nutritional
intake, annual health screening and sleep problems) and
perceived physical health, physical fitness and psychological health?
Methods
Research Design
A cross-sectional, descriptive correlational study was carried out to
examine the relationships among the study variables. This was part of
a larger study examining stress and health among university students
in Thailand. Results concerning the mediating effects of coping were
published elsewhere (Klainin-Yobas et al., 2014).
Participants
The target participants of this study were nursing students enrolled
in a university in Thailand. A total of 1210 students were enrolled in one
of the four main nursing programmes in the university: four-year Bachelor,
four-month Nursing Specialty, Master's, and Doctoral programmes.
All students were eligible for this study except those who had chronic
physical illnesses requiring hospitalisation and/or who had mental disorders
diagnosed by psychiatrists. The rationale behind the exclusion
criteria was that physical illness and mental disorders are confounding
factors that might affect outcome variables (such as physical fitness).
Participant recruitment commenced after we had received ethics approval
from the university. A convenience sampling was used and the