[Use of a self-administered quality of life questionnaire in a university preventive service]

In France, the student population represents close to two million people covered by the medical and social plan of the Services de Sante Inter-Universitaires (Inter-University Health Services), of which one of the objectives is to improve students' quality of life. This is why it seemed interesting to measure this quality of life in order to identify problems and to propose possible improvements. For this, we used a generic self-administered questionnaire, the SF 36, which allowed for detecting the variations of quality of life in relation to health status. Throughout the 1995-1996 school year, 1301 questionnaires were completed by first year students seen in routine visits or scheduled appointments. The questionnaire was well received. The self-administered questionnaire is a sensitive tool that revealed, among healthy students, statistically significant differences in scores between girls and boys (with girls showing lower scores). This difference is not found in the group of students who came for an appointment for a benign pathology. The causes of these variations remain to be explored.