[Assessing young university students' behaviour regarding health].

OBJECTIVE Constructing a questionnaire for assessing university students' behaviour regarding health forming part of their life-styles and evaluating its psychometric properties. METHODS A two-phases validation study was conducted; the first covered 1,485 students (63.2 % female) from four Colombian universities having a mean age of 20.65 years (SD=2.5) and the second covered 1,811 students (55.8 % female) from six universities having a mean age of 19.65 years (SD=2.0). A content validity analysis, an item discrimination analysis, a factorial analysis and reliability assessment were done. RESULTS The final version of the university students' life-style questionnaire [CEVJU-R, by its Spanish's abbreviations] finally consisted of 40 items related to health and life-style regarding eight factors: physical activity, leisure time, eating habits, alcohol, cigarette and drug use, sleep, interpersonal abilities, coping and perceived emotional state. It also included 28 items evaluating motivation (whether to engage in certain practices regarding health and whether to change them) and the availability of resources facilitating or interfering with such behaviour in seven out of the eight dimensions. Factor reliability level was acceptable (ranging from 0.6 to 0.7). CONCLUSIONS The CEVJU-R had suitable psychometric properties and constituted an advance in measuring university students' life-styles and could help identify health need and focus health promotion and prevention strategies in this population.