SPORTS IMPACTS ON THE IMPROVEMENT OF QUALITY OF LIFE

Blerina Aliaj, Mirjeta Cenaj

Abstract

Quality of life is a broad concept that encompasses all aspects of a person's existence. It is defined as the individual perceptions of their life positioning, in the cultural context and in relation to the values of their society, as well as from the viewpoint of personal goals, expectations, standards and concerns. The purpose of this study is to inspect how sports / physical activity affect the quality of human life. The target group of the study were the students at Sports University of Tirana and the respondents of this questionnaire were (n = 106) students in total. To distinguish how sports affected the students’ lives we included a question to differentiate between students engaging regularly in sports/physical activity (n = 53) and students who are not doing any sports or physical activity (n = 53). The instrument used is the Quality-of-Life Scale - WHOQOL - BREF (University of Washington Seattle, U.S.A, 1997) which is divided into 4 main areas: quality of life in general, physical health, psychological health and interpersonal relationships. The results of the study showed that students who regularly engage in sports / physical activity in all four areas of the questionnaire had better results confirming the hypothesis that sports/physical activity significantly improves the quality of life

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