Relações entre aspectos nutricionais e qualidade de vida percebida em docentes universitários

Abstract

College professors usually perform physical tasks of low intensity associated to a daily work pace and of responsibility before society, that may lead them to stressful and demotivating situations. In addition to bad feeding habits and to the lack of physical activities, these situations may provoke the development of non transmissible sicknesses and severe conditions , thus affecting their life quality. Lately this topic has been drawing attention of people of different age groups , social classes and levels of education. That’s why this current research has as a goal to explore nutritional aspects of college professors of a private Higher Institution in the state of Sergipe/Brazil. We also aim to set connections with the perceived life quality. This is a transverse exploratory descriptive quantitative qualitative outline research. The nutritional diagnostic was used through anthropometric data (weight, height, abdominal circumference to collect quantitative data referring to 248 professors taking part in this research. Data was collected within the previous 24 hours and with the nutritional knowledge quiz. The World Health Organization quiz (WHOQOL-bref) was used to measure life quality represented by physical and psychological domains, social relations and the environment. In order to characterize the social demographical status quo of the college professors we have applied a social demographical quiz. An interview was carried out relating to the qualitative analysis. It was semi structured with a sample of 10 professors who presented extreme scores (maximum and minimum) in the assessment of life quality through a descriptive textual analysis. The research result has characterized professors with a satisfactory overall life quality and it has come to a conclusion that their feeding behavior reflects discrepancy between knowledge on nutrition, anthropometry and life quality. This is due to the fact that their practice differs from the theory , specially on the optics of specific domains such as the physical and the environment ones. The empowerment process of professors is a continuous one that encompasses both personal development as well as the professional one and therefore it contributes to the improvement of quality in higher education.