Atividade física e fatores associados em estudantes universitários durante a pandemia de COVID-19 sob a ótica da cientometria

Abstract

The global scientific community advocates that the adult population should practice at least 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week. When it comes to university students, they experience moments of uncertainty and adaptations in their lifestyle, in addition to presenting different social, economic and demographic. These factors may be related to the level of physical activity and healthy behaviors, which may have been relegated to the background, manifesting themselves in a variable and inconsistent manner, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The general objective of this research was to analyze the national and international scientific production on the level of physical activity and associated factors in university students during the COVID-19 pandemic. To achieve this objective, this dissertation was developed in the Scandinavian (alternative) model, composed of three scientific articles to meet the specific objectives: 1) to analyze the world scientific production on the level of physical activity and factors associated with COVID-19 in university students; 2) to examine scientific evidence on the beneficial effects of physical activity in reducing the worsening of COVID-19 and the occurrence of hospitalizations due to the disease through a systematic review; and 3) to map the national scientific production on the factors associated with the regular practice of physical activity in Brazilian university students published between 2020 and 2023. For objective 1, a systematic review was conducted retrieving evidence indexed in the PubMed database, with the time frame established between January 1, 2020 and July 1, 2022. For objective 2, a bibliometric review was conducted in the Scopus database, from January 1, 2019 to February 19, 2023. For objective 3, a scope review was conducted through searches conducted in the Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus, Latin American and Caribbean Literature (LILACS) and Google Scholar databases, covering the period from March 1, 2020 to June 1, 2023. From the studies carried out, it can be concluded that: 1) There is no agreement in the scientific literature on the effects of the pandemic on the levels of physical activity presented by university students; 2) The regular practice of physical activity is a modifiable condition and proven to be associated with protection against infection and decreased risk of developing severe cases of COVID-19 and, in addition to other chronic non-communicable diseases; 3) In Brazil, there has been a significant increase in the prevalence of physical inactivity among college students during the COVID-19 pandemic.