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'