The association of intake of energy boosting drinks with the academic performance of 1st year to 3rd year medical students of De La Salle Health Sciences for the 1st semester, S.Y. 2016-2017

The objective of the study was to determine the prevalence of high intake of energy boosting drinks and its association with self-reported academic performance of 1st-3rd year medical students of De La Salle Health Sciences Institute for the 1st semester, SY 2016-2017. Analytic cross-sectional research design was used where Stratified random sampling was used as sampling technique. Student participants were asked to fill up a questionnaire to determine their frequency, amount and pattern of the intake of energy boosting drinks and their corresponding academic performance during 1st semester, SY 2016-2017. Study habits and social factors were also determined in relation to the intake of energy boosting drinks and academic performance percentage of those with high intake was estimated and their academic performance was compared to those with average intake. Prevalence ratio and 95% confidence interval was computed to describe the association between intake of energy boosting drinks and academic performance. Chi-square test statistic was used to determine if association was statically significant at 0.05 level. Seventy two percent of the medical students increase their intake of energy boosting drinks during evaluations. However, there was insufficient evidence to conclude an association between the intake of energy-boosting drinks and academic performance. Students were not likely to have better or poor academic performance based on their intake of these drinks, in contrast with other literature which proved otherwise. The study focused solely on self-reported grades of students; hence, future studies should explore other factors which may have an effect on student performance