Level of physical self-concept in university students according to gender

Currently, there has been an explosive increase in mental illnesses that affect personal self-concept. Self-concept is defined as the perception that the person has of himself and can be classified into various areas, within the areas is the physical self-concept (ACF), which is an individual self-assessment of attributes in the physical domain carried out. the person towards himself. The objective of the study was to analyze physical self-concept according to gender in a sample of 671 university students from the Valpara & iacute;so region in Chile (n=369 women; age: 21.72 +/- 3.91 years), (n=302 men; age: 21.77 +/- 3.57 years). The Physical Self Description Question-naire short version (PSDQ-s) in online format was used to measure physical self-concept. Descriptive statistics and a non-parametric Mann Whitney test were used to analyze the results. The effect size (ES) test was also applied to calculate the magnitude of the differ-ences. The results showed differences between men and women in all the dimensions of the ACF evaluated (p<0.05), highlighting moderate effects in the variables ACF global (p=<0.001; ES=0.342), resistance (p=<0.001; ES =0.385), sport (p=<0.001; ES=0.354), and strength (p=<0.001; ES=0.426). It is concluded that women have lower physical self-concept values compared to men, an aspect to be considered when generating intervention programs in mental health and quality of life.