Improvement of healthy lifestyle habits in university students through a gamification approach

Introduction: Health education is one of the primary tools for health promotion, especially for those that will be responsible for educating on healthy habits in the future. Objective: To improve healthy lifestyle habits in university students through an educational intervention based on gamification. Method: A cuasiexperimental design of two groups (i.e., experimental groups and control group) with pretest and postest measurements was carried out. A 4-month intervention was implemented in 148 students from the Physical Activity and Sport Sciences university degree. Habits related to diet and physical activity were evaluated using a questionnaire (scaled from -40 a +50) and the teaching-learning process through a qualitative analysis. Results: At the end of the intervention, a very signifi cant improvement was found in the global value of the healthy lifestyle habits of the experimental group (+13,5), highlighting the improvement obtained in its higher level of compliance in the breakfast (53,4%), in the number of diary meals (31,5%), in the reduction of the consumption of soft-drinks (19,2%) and in the increase of physical activity level, with an improvement of 12,3% of participants with respect to the baseline levels. On the other hand, no signifi cant improvements were found in the control group. Conclusions: An educational intervention based on gamification improves healthy lifestyle habits of the students.