ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health Education and Promotion
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1624914
Physical Activities Awareness and Practice among the Healthcare Professions Students in Saudi Arabia
Provisionally accepted
Salah H. Elsafi1,2*
Eidan Al Zahrani1Abdulwahab H. Alharbi3Wadha S. Alotaibi1Aqeelah A. Alyahya1Sarah A. Alqahtani1Shatha M. Al Thabet1Shrooq O. Al Harbi1Ahmed A. Adam1Abdallah A. Al Shehri1- 1Prince Sultan Military College of Health Sciences, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia
- 2Prince Sultan Military College of Health Sciences, Dammam, Saudi Arabia
- 3Basic Medical Unit, Prince Sultan Military College of Health Sciences, Dammam, Saudi Arabia
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This study aimed to measure and correlate the level of awareness, attitude, and practice of physical activity among healthcare professional students with various demographical variables. This cross-sectional study used a structured online questionnaire. A heterogeneous purposive sample, according to the study’s objectives, of health professional students belonging to 15 universities in Saudi Arabia from February to May 2024. The overall knowledge, positive attitude, and practice scores of the participants towards the physical activity guidelines were moderate as represented by 68.97%, 47.93 %, and 51.90%, respectively. Unlike knowledge and attitude, practice varies among all demographic features. Participants identified walking as the most common form of exercise, 60.64%, followed by moderate-intensity activity,16.15%, and vigorous-intensity activity, 9.17%, while 14.04% reported no practice. Barriers to practice PA included lack of time, 55%, lack of interest, 30%, and illness/injury, 6%. There was a significant relationship between the mean practice score and both knowledge and attitude scores (p = 0.001 and 0.003, respectively). The study indicated a relatively moderate awareness and practice of physical activity that varied according to the demographic features due to regional differences in educational systems, cultures, and socioeconomic classes. The study highlighted the possibility of focused interventions to close the knowledge-behavior gap and encourage active lives in this community.
Keywords: Conceptualization, Data curation, methodology, Software, Validation, Writing original draft, Writingreview & editing. Abdulwahab H. Alharbi: Conceptualization, visualization
Received: 09 May 2025; Accepted: 16 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Elsafi, Al Zahrani, Alharbi, Alotaibi, Alyahya, Alqahtani, Al Thabet, Al Harbi, Adam and Al Shehri. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Salah H. Elsafi, Prince Sultan Military College of Health Sciences, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia
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