University Recreational Facilities Service Quality and Students’ Physical Activity Level

AbstractService quality of recreational facilities is an important factor in attracting people to get involved in physical activities such as fitness training, outdoor recreation and sports. This study aims to examine the relationship between university recreational facilities service quality and students’ physical activity level. 390 university students (n = 390) from Universiti Teknologi MARA, Universiti Tenaga Nasional and National Defence University of Malaysia participated in the study. The instruments used were International Physical Activity Questionnaire-Short Form and Service Quality survey. The questionnaire used was based on three main dimensions that represented service quality, namely, ambience of the facility, operations quality and competency of the staff. The items were measured using the Likert scale in which one (1) represented ‘poor’ and five (5) represented ‘excellent”. The overall service quality was measured by calculating the mean score for each dimension and the grand mean of all items. The data was analyzed using Spearmen Correlation. The findings indicated that there was no significant relationship between service quality and physical activity level p = 0.312 (p > 0.05). Thus, service quality did not affect the level of physical activity of the students. However, there was evidence indicating that the universities were still lacking in recreational facilities and quality operation - factors that could attract the students to be physically active