Investigation of Social Health and its Relationship with Quality of Life in Medical Students of Golestan University of Medical Sciences

Social health is the most complex aspect of health that plays a key role in the quality of social life and can be the cause of suffering or aggravation of psycho-social and physical problems. Therefore, the present study was conducted with the aim of investigating social health and its relationship with quality of life among medical students at Golestan University of Medical Sciences in 2018.

This descriptive-analytical and cross-sectional study was conducted using stratified random sampling. A total of 190 people were selected for non-clinical and clinical stages. Data were collected using a questionnaire to determine social health and quality of life and then analyzed with SPSS software (version 16) using the t-test, ANOVA, Mann-Whitney U test, Kruskal-Wallis test, X2, as well as Pearson and Spearman correlation analyses. The significance level was considered to be 0.05.

The mean age of the students was 23.06±2.28 years, and the majority (58.9%) were female. The average scores of social health and quality of life of the students were 104.16±8.47 and 90.9±13.01, respectively. Social health had a direct and significant relationship with quality of life (r=0.0482, P=0.001). Age showed an inverse relationship with social health (r=-0.17, P=0.8) and a direct relationship with quality of life (r=0.14, P=0.07). Variables of gender, ethnicity, marital status, and place of residence had no relationship with social health indicators or quality of life.

Social health is directly related to the quality-of-life index of students. Moreover, an increase in age improves the quality of life but decreases social health.