Influence of Proper Nutrition, Daily Physical Activity, and Sleeping Habits on Students’ Cognitive Performance

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to assess the Influence of proper nutrition, daily physical activity, and sleeping habits on students' cognitive performance. As the  current study examined the Influence of Proper Nutrition, Daily Physical Activity, and Sleep Habits on students' cognitive performance; therefore, a cross-sectional research approach was employed by the researcher. The target population of this study consisted of all male and female physical education students enrolled in the degree colleges of Dera Ismail Khan, KP, Pakistan. It was quite difficult for the researcher to contact the whole population. To overcome this problem, six hundred and seventy-five (675) students were taken as a sample of the study by using a stratified random sampling technique. For the collection of data, the researcher adopted three adopted questionnaire, i.e. Proper Nutrition Scale, the Daily Physical Activity Scale, the Sleeping Habits and the Students’ Cognitive Performance Scale. The modified version of these questionnaires was subjected to the process of validity and reliability. The developed questionnaires were personally served by the researcher among the respondents and collected back after being filled out by the respondents. The collected data were processed through Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS, Version-32), and thus suitable statistical tools were applied according to parametric data. Results of the study showed that lifestyle factors showed significant positive correlations with cognitive performance (r = 0.48–0.55, p < .001), collectively explaining 42% of its variance (R² = 0.42, p < .001). Proper nutrition was the strongest predictor (β = 0.38), followed by sleeping habits (β = 0.33) and physical activity (β = 0.30). Respondents reported the highest means in sleeping habits and cognitive performance, but the lowest in physical activity. On the basis of results, the study highlighted that Proper nutrition, daily physical activity, and healthy sleeping habits has significant impact upon students’ cognitive performance.