Assessment of physical activity of students at basic medical sciences of Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences in academic year 2015-2016

Physical inactivity has been linked with many non-communicable diseases and it is now a major health problem in many countries. The aim of this research was to study the level of physical activity in the students at basic medical ssciences in Yazd Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences.
This research was a cross sectional-descriptive study and its sampling method was census. The number of students from Yazd Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences at basic medical sciences who consented to participate in the study was 220. The International Physical Activity Questionnaire (long form) was used to collect data. SPSS version 16 was used for analysis of the obtained data. The significance level was considered less than 0.05.
From 221students attending this project, 36 (16.3%) students were males and 185 were females. In this study, 33.5% (74 students), 61.5% (136 students) and 5% (11 students) had, respectively, low, moderate and severe physical activity. Moreover, there was a significant relationship between physical activity and body mass index (P=0.003) and life location (P=0.012) and gender (P=0.001).
Approximately one third (33.4%) of the students had low physical activity and moderate and severe physical activity was more than the female students. It seems that some interventions should be designed for increasing the level of physical activity among the students in order to determine the current status and present solutions for improving the present situation.