ATTITUDES TOWARDS STRESS AND LIFESTYLE OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN HEALTH EDUCATION

Shaping the attitudes to lifestyle in a holistic concept is included in all stages of education in the Czech Republic. The objective of the present research is to identify the attitudes of university students to concepts associated with bio-psycho-social aspects of lifestyle (including stress) and their development by year of study and gender. The research sample comprises students who will become teachers of subjects in the category of Health education and will thus deliberately influence the lifestyle of their students. Students' attitudes were measured by means of the ATER two-factor semantic differential (plus own questionnaire). The respondents were presented with concepts associated with both positive and negative aspects of lifestyle, self-conception and social relationships. The obtained data were used to develop a semantic space of the concepts. The differences between various groups were further compared by means of the Student's t-test and analysis of variance. The results suggest that the attitudes of students of Health education correspond with the aspects of an optimum lifestyle. A comparison of the attitudes by year of study and gender revealed differences only in some concepts. In both dimensions a statistically significant difference was observed in the concept Mental stress, which has poor evaluation and is energy demanding. The results demonstrated that the attitudes of students of Health education were consistent with the theoretical knowledge and the profile of a graduate from this field of study. The results also correspond with the content of the curriculum defined by the Czech curricular documents. (C) 2017 Published by Future Academy www.FutureAcademy.org.UK