Background: Uni‌versity period encompasses many stresses for students trying to accomplish their academic goals. University students might adopt risky or unhealthy behaviors. This study aimed to measure the prevalence of several behaviors related to health and lifestyle characteristics (e.g. some nutritional habits, physical activity, tobacco smoking, etc.) and to compare the participating university students (governmental versus private) as regards their health behav‌iors and lifestyle characteristics.
Methods: Comparative cross sectional study was conducted in two Egyptian Universities-a governmental and a private university. A sample of 1133 students from both University campuses were included in data collection. Response rate was 97%. A self-administered Arabic questionnaire was used.
Results: Mean±SD age was 19.9±1.6 years ,43.3% males. Prevalence of smoking was 11.1% (cigarettes 6.6%, water-pipe 2.4% while poly smokers represented 2.1%). Experimental smoking was tried in 4.9% while occasional smokers represented 2.2%. Illicit drug ever use was declared by 7.6%. Seven percent reported ever drinking alcohol. Multivariate regression showed that being a male student has a 6.69 times risk for harmful behavior, students from private university (OR=1.92), staying in student house (OR=2.44) while higher monthly expenditure (>1000 LE) increases the risk by 1.6 times.
Conclusion: There was a rising trend of undesirable habits among youth when compared to previous studies. Physical activity and healthy eating pattern were poorly adopted by study sample. Special attention should be directed to private sector education focusing on male students. Successful quitting stories –of tobacco, alcohol and illicit drugs- should be learnt with emphasis on quitters as “Successful models".