A comparative study investigating the Attitudes of subjective health of Undergraduate natural medicine students and Psychology students at the university of the Western cape.
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate the attitude of subjective health of
natural medicine students and to compare this to the attitude of subjective health
of psychology students. A descriptive, survey research design was utilised for this
study. A qualitative and quantitative methodology was utilised' The sample
consisted of 180 undergraduate students ranging between the ages of l8 to 25+'
These undergraduate students were divided as follows: 80 per psychology group
and 80 per natural medicine group. Data was collected by means of a generic
health questionnaire (RAND 36-item General Health Questionnaire)' The aim of
this study was to investigate how students felt about their own subjective health
since these students are in the industry or field of health'
Structured interviews were adopted for this component; the interviews were
transcribed and a thematic analysis was used as a means of analysing the data'
The following hypotheses were tested for this study: 1) results suggest a
significant difference between Natural medicine Students and Psychology
students; 2) results suggest a significant difference between the demographic
information between the 2 groups. Results showed that there was a significant
difference for 3Ooh of the questions in the questionnaire. Results also indicate that
the psychology group scored higher mean scores compared to the natural
medicine group across 8 health concepts. Limitations are discussed in the final
chapter. Recommendations are suggested for future study'