Testing the Health and Exercise Knowledge of Bowling Green State University Students

Obesity has reached epidemic proportions and the problem is only continuing to grow (Flegal, 2006). Young adult college students are at a time in their lives where behaviors can more easily change than during other ages. They also are at a point in their lives where their current behaviors will influence the habits that they continue into later adulthood (Racette, Deusinger, Strube, & Highstein, 2012). Education is one way to promote healthy changes by college students. It is important to find out what knowledge of health and exercise college students already have. I developed a questionnaire with content-related validity and distributed it to 100 college students at Bowling Green State University (BGSU), who ranged from freshmen to graduate students, between the ages of 19 and 33. I calculated the percentage of the participants who chose the correct answer of each item on the questionnaire. A majority of the participants selected the right answer for three out of the five general health and wellness questions, two out of the four nutrition and all four of the exercise-related questions. The results illustrated that a certain number of the BGSU students who completed the questionnaire lacked accurate nutrition and general health and wellness knowledge. A majority of these same BGSU students were well informed on knowledge of certain exercise topics