The results of the health survey in Vesanto (FIN)

Young European and Well-being: A healthy body and body image now and through time

Survey of lifestyle among the students of Vesannon yhtenäiskoulu

Report of the results obtained

 Anne Vidgren

Vesannon yhtenäiskoulu

1. Introduction

The Young European and Well-being (YEW): A healthy body and body image now and through time is a three-year project between three public schools: Vesannon yhtenäiskoulu from Vesanto, Finland; Liceo Statale A. Serpieri from Rimini, Italy; and Zespol Szkol Nr 7 from Toruń, Poland, all in the field of secondary education. The project is set up at a time when all our schools express concern for the well-being of our students.  The need for the project has been observed in the daily lives in all these schools and also through previous student health surveys. The target group of the the project is teenagers, especially aged 14 to 18 years.

The project aims to increase students' knowledge and awareness of the concept of well-being from various perspectives, which include a healthy diet, physical exercise, a healthy body image and the balance between technology usage and other activities. The project aims to bring European dimension into the matters mentioned, and to have a positive influence on the attitudes of students and their current lifestyles. It also aims to increase students'  interest in the matters of health and well-being and finally sets out to involve the students in the process of taking care of themselves in all ways possible, physically, emotionally and socially, and this way potentially prevent early school leaving.

The project consists of numerous activities, all of which are targeted at teenagers and all of which aim at working on the topics of well-being in a comprehensive manner to reach the project objectives.

The expected impact of the project on the participants include the increase of European awareness, knowledge of history of art and of a healthy lifestyle, being healthy and psychologically balanced, the ability to cook well and in a healthy way, enhancing students' language and intercultural skills, social networking, gaining social and digital skills, a greater understanding of cultural diversity, and a more positive attitude towards European projects. The project activities are expected to increase the amount of concise,  accurate and targeted knowledge available to our target group online, and to increase awareness of the issues stated above.

The longer term benefits which are desired to be achieved by this project include children becoming more aware of how to lead a healthy life. Students will become healthier in a physical sense, more fit, and also more accepting of their own bodies. They will share their knowledge with their friends and family and this will hopefully prevent diseases in our towns as well. Thus, we could expect lower economical costs of medical treatment in the future, and this will benefit the local and regional health care.

The survey of lifestyle is a part of the project activities. The purpose of this survey is to study the lifestyle of the young people in three schools involved in the project. The survey focuses mainly on eating habits, body image and general well-being. This report is made to compile the results obtained in the survey of lifestyle among the students of Vesannon yhtenäiskoulu and Vesannon yhtenäiskoulun lukio.  The results below deal only with the results obtained in Vesanto. A similar survey of lifestyle is to be conducted in spring 2017 to study to what extent our project has had an influence on the youngsters’ lifetyle. 

2. Results

We conducted the survey of lifestyle among the students of Vesannon yhtenäiskoulu at the beginning of January 2015. The survey was made on the website https://fi.surveymonkey.com and it was an online survey. Altogeher a hundred students answered the questionnaire. The students answering the questions were between 13 and 19 years old. You can see the division into different age groups in figure 1.

Figure 1. Division into different age groups

2.1  Eating habits

The first set of questions deals with eating habits and questions related to food. The students in Vesanto eat quite regularly during the day. Only 19 % of the students eat less than three meals per day, and 38 % of the students eat three meals a day, whereas 43 % eat more than three meals a day. (See figure 2.)

  

Figure 2. How many meals do you eat in a day?

The amount of fruit eaten by the students is not very high, as 59 % of the students eat only less than three portions of fruit a day. 34 % of the students eat three or four portions of fruit a day and only 7 % eat five or more portions a day (see figure 3). However, the students seem to be aware of the unhealthiness of fast food, as 88 % of the students eat it only zero to one time a week and no student eats it more than three times a week (see figure 4). At the same time, 97 % of the students usually eat home-made meals and only three percent often eat take-away meals, as can be observed in figure 5.

 

Figure 3. How many portions of fruit do you eat every day?

Figure 4. How many times per week do you eat fast food?

 

Figure 5. What kind of meals do you usually eat at home?

In Finland, every school has a cantine and all the students enjoy a free school lunch. When asked if they think that every public school in Finland should have a cantine, 56 % of the students answered yes, 18 % answered no and 26 % didn’t care about the matter (see figure 6).

Figure 6. Should every public school have a cantine?

88 % of the students know many different places where they can buy healthy food and 12 % are not aware of these places (see figure 7). 54 % of the students in Vesanto think that different kinds of eating disorders are a serious problem among the teenagers, whereas 16 % think it is not such a big problem. Quite a high number, 30 % altogether didn’t really know if they are a significant problem, as can be observed in figure 8.

Figure 7. Do you know many places where you can buy healthy food?

Figure 8. Do you think that eating disorders are a serious problem amongst teenagers?

2.2  General well-being 

In this section, the questions deal with sleep, exercise, technology usage and general well-being.

The general recommendation is that you should get approximately eight hours of sleep during the night. Most of the students in Vesanto reach this target and sleep eight or more hours a night (50 %). 44 % of the students sleep from five to seven hours a night and only 6 % get less than five hours of sleep, as can be seen in figure 9.

Figure 9. How many hours do you sleep at night?

45 % of the students are active and do sports three times or more during the week. This does not include PE lessons. 49 % of the students do physical exercise once or twice a week and fortunately only 6 % say that they never do sports outside PE lessons.

Figure 10. How many times a week do you do physical exercise (except PE lessons)?

The students in Vesanto have various ways to relax. Music seems to be the most important to these students, as 78 % mention it as a way to relax. 51 % of the students wind down by meeting friends, 41 % unwind by playing computer games and 29 % do physical activities as a way to relax.

Figure 11. How do you relax?

64 % of the students spend two or fewer hours watching television, 32 % watch TV from two to four hours a day and only 4 % spend more than four hours in front of the TV. However, the students screen time seems to consist more of spending time on their computers, as 46 % use it two hours a day or less, 37 % spend two to four hours on it and 17 % spend more than four hours in front of the computer screen (see figures 12 and 13).

 

Figure 12. How many hours a day do you spend in front of a TV set?

Figure 13. How many hours a day do you spend in front of your computer?

The majority of the students in Vesanto are happy (62 %), and only 2 % say that they aren’t happy people. However, the number of students who say that their happiness is not a constant state is quite high, 36 %. This can be seen in figure 14.

 

Figure 14. Are you a happy person?

The students of Vesanto feel quite healthy, as 53 % say that they are almost never sick and 35 % are sick from time to time. Only 12 % say that they are sick very often (see figure 15).

Figure 15. How often do you get sick?

Teenage is often a time of experimenting and indeed, 63 % of the students have tried alcohol at some point in their life, 48 % have tried cigarettes but only 8 % have tried some kind of drugs. This, however, does not tell anything about how much of how often they use it.

Figure 16. Have you ever tried alcohol?

Figure 17. Have you ever tried cigarettes?

Figure 18. Have you ever tried drugs?

2.3 Body image

The last set of questions dealt with the students’ body image. That is the way they see and experience their own body.

Most of the students in Vesanto are open-minded and accepting towards tattoos, as 75 % of the students think they are decorations. 20 % find tattoos unhealthy and 5 % feel that they are disgusting (see figure 19).

Figure 19. What is your perception of tattoos?

In general, the students in Vesanto are comfortable with their bodies, as 75 % of them say that they are okay with their body, and 74 % of the students would not change anything in their bodies if they were given a possibility of a plastic surgery. There are still some students that are not comfortable with their bodies, as 19 % say that they feel overweight and 6 % feel they are too slim.  Altogether 26 % of the students would go under the blade to change something in their body. See figures 20 and 21 for details.

Figure 17. If you were given a possibility of a plastic surgery, would you change anything in your body?

Figure 18. How do you perceive your body?

3. Conclusion

Based on these results, some aspects of healthy living are part of everyday life of the students in Vesannon yhtenäiskoulu, whereas some aspects could be improved. 

The students eat in quite a healthy way, get enough sleep and exercise, are mostly happy and content with their bodies and a very small minority have tried drugs. However, the screen time, both the time spent watching television and being on the computer are quite substantial and this could be an issue to address and discuss with the parents. The students could also eat more fruit. In addition, many students have also tried alcohol and cigarettes. Here, we must take into account that some of the students that answered the questionnaire are indeed aged 18 or over.

These results will be complemented by the results of a more comprehensive health survey which is to be conducted in our school during the spring semester.