Quality of life and academic performance in college students

Resumo: A procura da qualidade de vida (QV) tem mostrado ser um forte elemento motivador para o comportamento e as conquistas humanas e tem merecido destaque nas pesquisas de forma crescente nos últimos anos. O interesse principal deste trabalho é estudar a associação que a qualidade de vida apresenta, utilizando seus domínios físico, psicológico, as relações sociais e o meio ambiente, e as facetas que os compõem. Para tal, foi utilizado o instrumento de qualidade de vida geral da Organização Mundial de Saúde, o WHOQOL breve e o questionário de caracterização socioeconômica; o rendimento acadêmico determinado pela média das notas das disciplinas cursadas no semestre. A amostra foi constituída por 431 alunos de ambos os sexos de seis diferentes cursos (Odontologia, Farmácia, Administração, Engenharia, Psicologia e Direito) de uma universidade confessional do estado de São Paulo, dos turnos diurno e noturno, sendo uma turma do segundo semestre e outra do último de cada curso. Os resultados mostraram que os alunos apresentam boa QV, sem atingir a excelência em nenhum dos domínios que descrevem essa variável. As diferenças significativas observadas entre as médias de QV ocorreram a favor dos alunos do turno noturno no domínio relações sociais, no gênero masculino, no domínio físico. Não foram observadas diferenças significativas quando se levou em consideração o semestre do curso. No grupo total não foi observada associação entre desempenho acadêmico e qualidade de vida nos seus respectivos domínios, porém foi encontrada nas facetas a ?capacidade para o trabalho? e a ?disponibilidade em obter informações?. A análise da relação entre qualidade de vida e desempenho acadêmico nos diferentes cenários (semestre, gênero, turno e curso) aponta associações, sendo que na variável curso foi observado o maior número, indicando a existência de especificidades entre os cursos tanto nos aspectos de qualidade de vida que mostram associação ao desempenho acadêmico, quanto na natureza dos aspectos relacionados. Isso aponta para as instituições que suas intervenções devem ser realizadas apoiadas principalmente nas características dos cursos e de seus graduandos e reforça a importância de os projetos pedagógicos devem ter em conta tais aspectosAbstract: The search for quality of life has revealed to be a strong motivator for the behavior and the human conquests, thus it has been the theme of a growing number of researches in the past few years. To study the association that quality of life (QL), through its domains (physical, psychological, social and environmental) and the compounded facets that introduce them with the academic performance (AP) was the main interest of this work. A general quality of life instrument of the World Organization of Health, brief WHOQOL, the socioeconomic characterization questionnaire and the academic income was determined by the average of the notes of the disciplines studied in the semester. The sample was constituted by students of six different night and day courses: Dentistry, Pharmacy, Administration, Engineering, Psychology and Law School, a group from the second semester and another one from last, in a total of 431 students of both sexes. A light predominance of feminine gender has occurred, the predominant age group was from 22 to 25 years, most of them are single, they work and have their own salary and even so they don't present economical independence. They live with their relatives, and the time of displacement to arrive to the university is inferior to 60 minutes, characteristics that are common to students of a private IES. The result showed that the students had presented a good QL without achieving the excellence in none of the domains that describe that variable. The courses showed different profiles of QL, having the course of Dentistry the best and the Law School the worst. The students at the night shift present the best significant medium (p=0,05) in the social domain relationships and the masculine gender also showed significant the best medium in the physical domain. The condition of being students with double day (student/worker) didn't show compromise of QL. When comparing the variables of interest it had not found correlation or association among them, studied in the all of the sample, but the facets related to the work capacity and readiness for obtaining information showed association with AP in the total group. Doing the analysis for different sceneries (semester, shift, gender and course) we could observe association among the variables. When we analyzed the association among QL and AP in the courses, we found several domains of QL and different facets associated to the AP according to the analyzed course. It is necessary to point that the courses where there is adult variability of notes, a bigger number of associations among the variables have occurred. There is difference in the association between QL and AP for the shifts, and the day shift has an association with the domain environment and with the facets that approach its satisfaction and with the means of transportation. The night shift with the facets takes advantage of life and readiness of information. There is a difference between the genders in the association between the QL and AP, and the masculine presents association in the psychological domain and with the facets satisfaction with the work capacity and with the readiness of information. For the feminine with the satisfaction facets takes advantage with acceptance of physical appearance. We understood that there is limitation in the results to do generalizatio