College student symptoms as assessed by a student health survey

Abstract

Objective

We sought to identify the general health of college students.

Participants

A total of 4402 university freshmen and sophomores were recruited to report their general health through an online questionnaire.

Methods

Responses from the DePaul Symptom Questionnaire were analyzed. We then conducted latent class analyses to evaluate 54 different symptoms among participants.

Results

A four class solution was identified, consisting of a group of asymptomatic students (35.65%), a second group of students reporting mild fatigue and sleep symptoms (38.87%), a third group reporting moderate sleep and fatigue symptoms (20.36%), and a group reporting moderate and severe complaints on the majority of symptoms (5.11%). Female students had 2.07 times the relative risk of the severe symptom class of men. Indigenous students have 2.88 times the relative risk of occupying the severe symptom class than non-indigenous students.

Conclusions

The results suggest that about 5% of college students have varied symptoms of a moderate to severe degree. Future research is needed to better assess whether there are biological associations with these self-report findings, as well as to determine longer-term implications of these symptoms.

Keywords:

• College student
• general health
• latent class analysis

Conflict of interest disclosure

The authors have no conflicts of interest to report. The authors confirm that the research presented in this article met the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements, of United States and received approval from the DePaul University Institutional Review Board.

Additional information

Funding

Funding was provided by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (grant number AI105781).