Students' attitude to health: empirical studies in Petrozavodsk state university

One of the key concepts is the lifestyle. Lifestyle is the things that a person or a particular group of people usually do. In this research, the aim was to assess health behavior of students of Petrozavodsk State University (PetrSU).

In recent years, Russia and the preservation of health is one of the priorities of social policy. For this purpose in 2006 Russian President Vladimir Putin announced and launched a national project "Health". Despite the implementation of this project in Russia today, there is a problem with declining health, including the health of young people.

The World Health Organization indicates that the main factors influencing human health are: medicine, environment, genetics. But all these factors are influenced by one main factor - the lifestyle.

Many people in Russia say that they have a genetic predisposition to addiction, such as alcoholism, others say that have poor health because of the medicine. Besides, many say that the environment (climate, ecology) has the most significant impact on their health. Thus, we can say that people deceive themselves. People ignore the fact that 50% of their health depends on their behavior. So, the health of a person depends mostly on a healthy lifestyle. Healthy lifestyle is a human activity, suggesting the conservation of resources and health improvement.

The scientific challenge in the research is to identify the factors that affect the formation of students' selfpreserving behavior. The theory of social factors by Emile Durkheim was the basis of this work. The theory of social risks by Zubok and the theory of self-preserving behavior by Zhuravleva were also used for this research.

There was conducted an anonymous survey of students in PetrSU. The aims of the survey were to identify factors influencing the health of students in PetrSU, to compare the factors influencing students' attitudes toward health depending on the gender of respondents.

After the research it was established:
The lifestyle of the parents affects the lifestyle of students.
Fourth- and fifth-year students have better health than first-year students.
Boys evaluate health higher than girls.
Karelia is a typical region concerning students' attitude to health.
Students who understand the need for disease prevention have better health and have more healthy lifestyles.

К. В. Волкова