Understanding the healthy lifestyle behaviors and life satisfaction of students and staff in a university

Being healthy is an important aspect in life satisfaction. The factors that effect the health status of an individual are named as the environmental factors, economical factors, socio-cultural factors, genetic factors, access to health services and life style. Since it can be controlled by the individual, lifestyle is a topic with great importance. Healthy lifestyle is defined as ?the individual?s control over her/his behaviors which can affect her/his health status and while orginising the daily activities, choosing the behaviors that are appropriate to her/his health status?. Healthy lifestyle behaviors are healthy nutrition, stress management, regular exercise, spiritual wellbeing, high quality interpersonal relations and taking the health responsibility. So, understanding the healthy lifestyle level and life satisfaction of individuals is important for health and education institutions, companies and governments to define their strategies accordingly. This quantitative study involves 205 Turkish individuals (students, academic staff and administrative staff) from a university in Istanbul. Data were obtained from self-administered questionnaires with 26 questions. The study examines the characteristics of the respondents regarding demographics, healthy lifestyle behaviors and life satisfaction. Some differences in sample?s healthy lifestyle dimensions were determined according to demographic variables after factor analysis, T-test, ANOVA and regression analysis. This research presents the opportunity for further qualitative research in healthy lifestyle habits among university students.