The impact of physical activity on the quality of life of uniformed services

Kudlikowska Beata, Zdziarski Krzysztof. The impact of physical activity on the quality of life of uniformed services. Journal of Education, Health and Sport. 2022;12(5):11-26. eISSN 2391-8306. DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.12775/JEHS.2022.12.05.001 https://apcz.umk.pl/JEHS/article/view/JEHS.2022.12.05.001 https://zenodo.org/record/6457815 The journal has had 40 points in Ministry of Education and Science of Poland parametric evaluation. Annex to the announcement of the Minister of Education and Science of December 21, 2021. No. 32343. Has a Journal's Unique Identifier: 201159. Scientific disciplines assigned: Physical Culture Sciences (Field of Medical sciences and health sciences); Health Sciences (Field of Medical Sciences and Health Sciences). Punkty Ministerialne z 2019 - aktualny rok 40 punktów. Załącznik do komunikatu Ministra Edukacji i Nauki z dnia 21 grudnia 2021 r. Lp. 32343. Posiada Unikatowy Identyfikator Czasopisma: 201159. Przypisane dyscypliny naukowe: Nauki o kulturze fizycznej (Dziedzina nauk medycznych i nauk o zdrowiu); Nauki o zdrowiu (Dziedzina nauk medycznych i nauk o zdrowiu). © The Authors 2022; This article is published with open access at Licensee Open Journal Systems of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author (s) and source are credited. This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non commercial license Share alike. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) which permits unrestricted, non commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited. The authors declare that there is no conflict of interests regarding the publication of this paper. Received: 26.03.2022. Revised: 30.03.2022. Accepted: 13.04.2022. The impact of physical activity on the quality of life of uniformed services Beata Kudlikowska, Student Research Group at the Subdepartment of Social Medicine and Public Health, Department of Social Medicine, Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin, 70-204 Poland, e-mail beti1-19@o2.pl, ORCID: 0000-0001-6058-3859 Krzysztof Zdziarski, PhD, Subdepartment of Social Medicine and Public Health, Department of Social Medicine, Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin, 70-204 Szczecin, Poland; krzysztof.zdziarski@pum.edu.pl, ORCID: 0000-0001-5766-026X Keywords: health; motor activity; quality of life; uniformed services Abstract Introduction: Public health covers almost all spheres of life that affect the well-being of the society. However, the most important in this process is the personal lifestyle and the related physical activity, which significantly affects health and the sense of personal satisfaction. For representatives of uniformed services, physical fitness is an extremely important element of everyday professional work and directly affects the effectiveness of actions taken. Aim of the research: The aim of the research was to learn about health behaviors related to physical activity and a subjective assessment of life satisfaction of representatives of the uniformed services of the Army and Police. Material and methods: The survey was conducted among 87 representatives of the power ministries: 47 professional soldiers and 40 policemen. For subjective assessment of physical fitness, the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) was used. Based on the standardized WHO questionnaire assessing the quality of life (WHOQOL), the subjective level of quality and life satisfaction of representatives of uniformed services was examined. Results: The obtained data indicated that 67.82% of representatives of uniformed services assess their physical activity at the level of sufficient, and 2.29% of respondents describe their quality of life as unsatisfactory. Representatives of uniformed services largely experience a sense of joy in their lives. Only 5.75% revealed that such a condition occurs in them little or no, and 52.5% of police officers and 40.43% of professional soldiers declared that physical activity was largely important in their lives. 83% of professional soldiers and 50% of policemen feel a very good sense of their own safety in everyday life. Conclusions: Soldiers most often engage in intense physical activity as part of their professional work, and also exercise more frequently in the open air. Police officers show greater awareness of self-satisfaction, readiness to work, relationships with people, housing conditions, and material wealth. They are also most often involved in intense physical activity, which they undertake on average 4 times a week, both during the service and in their free time. Sporadically chosen form of spending free time by policemen is: playing on the console, tablet, phone;however, they often use means of transport (car, bus, tram)