Association of physical activity with musculoskeletal status among undergraduate students

Abstract

The objective of this study was to find out the association of physical activity with musculoskeletal status (MSK-S) among undergraduate students. In this cross-sectional descriptive study, subjects comprised of 143 students of which 27.3% were male and 72.7% were female between ages 18-26 years. The Musculoskeletal health questionnaire (MSK-HQ) was used to measure MSK-HS. Beacke questionnaire was used for the measurement of a person’s habitual physical activity. Among the samples, 6.3% of the students were from 1^st year, 8.4% from 2^nd year, 7.0% from 3^rd year, 16.1% from 4^th year and 62.2% from 5th year. The association of physical activity with musculoskeletal health status (p = 0.00) was significant. The physical activity levels in correlation to the male and female population (p = 0.31) were not significant. MSK health among the male and female population found to be statistically significant (p=0.01). MSK scores between different academic years were statistically significant difference (p = 0.02). This study showed that students who had high physical activity levels had better MSK health status whereas, students engaged in low physical activity had poorer MSK health status. Results indicated that male population had poor MSK health status as compared to the female population. The comparison of different academic years indicated that MSK health status among 1^st and 2^nd years was poor while it was better for final years. The study indicated that the students were physically active at moderate levels.