Comparing self-efficacy, quality of life and sleep quality among medical students with and without internet addiction

Objective (s): Internet addiction as a new phenomenon in the young generation, especially in students, has led to a lack of attention to physical and mental health, reduced quality of life, sleep and educational problems. Also, self-efficacy as a personality trait that can play a role in Internet addiction. The purpose of this study was to compare self-efficacy, quality of life and sleep quality of medical students with and without internet addiction. Methods: The present study was a cross-sectional study. The study population was all students of Tehran University of Medical Sciences in academic year 2019-2020. Using the stratified random sampling method, 300 students (115 men and 185 women) were selected as the samples. The Young internet addiction questionnaire, the short form health survey (SF-36), the Sherer self-efficacy beliefs questionnaire, and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality questionnaire were used to collect data Multivariate analysis of variance used to analyze the data. Results: In all 300 medical and dental students aged 18 to 39 years participated in the study. Multivariate analysis of variance, showed that there was a significant difference between quality of life (P< 0/001), self-efficacy (P< 0/001) and sleep quality (P< 0/001) of among students with and without internet addiction. Conclusion: The findings confirmed that the internet addicted users had lower quality of life, lower sleep quality and lower self-efficacy, than regular users.