Associated Factors With Fatigue Among Working College Students

*Corresponding author e-mail: fmfische@usp.br Introduction: Former studies showed negative health effects among adolescents, when combined work and study. To assess factors associated with perceived fatigue among College working students. Methods: This is a cross sectional study carried out in a public College of São Paulo, Brazil. All students aged 18-26 years old, who worked at least six hours per day, attended evening classes (19h30min to 23h:10min) were invited to participate. Two hundred seventy three students voluntarily accepted to participate in this study. They answered a comprehensive questionnaire about living and working conditions (including detailed set of questions on occupational stressors, the work-control Karasek model, and other working conditions), sleep disturbances, reported sleep duration, and health symptoms. A Brazilian adapted version of the Yoshitake fatigue scale (Yoshitake, 1975) was included in the survey. Mean age of participants was 22 years old, and did not differ of the whole population. Initially, the data were submitted to descriptive statistics (frequency distribution, means and standard deviation), followed by hierarchical linear regression analysis. Four levels were tested in the model: first - socio-demographic, second - life-style, third - working conditions and fourth - health conditions variables. A stepwise forward selection was performed. In all analysis was considered α=5%. Results: According to the linear regression model, fatigue scale increased 16.79 points for females (p<.01) and showed morningness as a protective factor (ßl=-.23; p=.05); regarding working conditions fatigue was associated with active jobs (ß1 = 12.11; p<.01) or high strain jobs (ß1 = 11.00; p<.01), and those with medium (ßl =6.11; p=.02) or low social support (ß1=8.12; p<.01) (second and third tertile, respectively). A longer sleep length was a protective factor (ß1=-.07; p<.01) and reporting symptoms of sleep disturbances increased 5.99 points on fatigue scale (p<.01). The model was adjusted by age, sharing family expenses and daily working time. Conclusions: College and work demands associated with a number of factors can pose a significant school and work conflict on students, interfering with their studies as well as their health and wellbeing. Psychosocial factors as work demands, work control and social support seem to be relevant factors which should be taken into account to decrease fatigue at work, mainly among females who work and study. Support: CNPq (501766/2007-3; 500782/2008-3; 472153/2006- 4; 307919/2006-4); CAPES, FAPESP (07/04648-4; 06/59053-2), PIBIC-CNPq. Publication History Article published online: 16 June 2026 © 2009. Brazilian Sleep Academy. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) Thieme Revinter Publicações Ltda. Rua Rego Freitas, 175, loja 1, República, São Paulo, SP, CEP 01220-010, Brazil