Knowledge And Attitude Towards High Blood Cholesterol Among Undergraduate Malaysian University Students
Keywords:
Knowledge, Attitudes, Cholesterol, Undergraduate students, MalaysiaAbstract
Background: High blood cholesterol in young adulthood is associated with an increased risk for cardiovascular diseases (CVD) in later stages of life if not managed well at a younger age. Based on the National Health and Morbidity Survey (NHMS) 2019, 4 out of 10 people in Malaysia have high cholesterol – 18.7% being between 18 and 29 years old. Understanding the risk of high blood cholesterol is necessary for proper management, and the attitude of undergraduate university students towards high blood cholesterol is vital. Therefore, this study aimed to identify the knowledge and attitudes towards high blood cholesterol among undergraduate university students.
Methods and Materials: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted at a private university in Malaysia in 2024. A total of 300 undergraduate students aged between 18 and 25 years were recruited for the study. The questionnaire was distributed among medical and non-medical undergraduate students aged between 18 and 25. Data was collected by an online questionnaire. This questionnaire identifies the level of knowledge possessed by using nominal scale questions (8 questions) and identifies the attitude of undergraduates using Likert scale questions (9 questions) with responses that range from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’. The data was analysed using IBM SPSS Statistic (SPSS) software Version 26.
Results: The 300 students were from health science-related faculties (n=166) and non-health science-related faculties (n=134). The distribution of respondents’ knowledge was 57.3% for good knowledge, 17.3% for moderate knowledge, and 25.3% for poor knowledge. 52.0% of respondents had a positive attitude, while 48.0% of respondents had a negative attitude towards high blood cholesterol. There were significant differences found in scores between the two groups of undergraduates, t (129) = 3.627, p < 0.001, two-tailed, with health science undergraduates (Mean = 6.17, SD = 3.01) having higher knowledge than the non-health science undergraduate (Mean = 4.18, SD =3.58). The magnitude of differences in the means (Mean Difference = 1.99, 95% CI: 0.904 to 3.07). However, no significant difference was found in attitude scores between student groups (p = 0.338).
Conclusions: There were significant differences in knowledge between health science and non-health science faculties towards high blood cholesterol.
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