Have you ever thought to make a survey about people who study abroad? The Lifestyle in Mobility project partners did. We spoke with Svenja van der Tol, 23 years old and the Secretary General of AEGEE-Europe, who explains us something about her project involving also Erasmus students denominated “Lifestyle in Mobility”.
Lifestyle in Mobility is a collaborative research project of the Catholic University of Milan, AEGEE-Europe and Cardiff University. The aim of the project is to investigate how study abroad students’ (for example with Erasmus) lifestyle and health behaviours change during their period abroad and once returned to their home countries. When we say “lifestyle and health behaviours”, we mean things like eating behaviour, physical exercise, alcohol consumption, etc. For this 
project, students are asked to fill in three surveys: one before they go abroad, one while they are abroad and one after they came back. In the past months, AEGEE-Europe and the two universities have shared the survey with students before they were going abroad, with the help of AEGEE locals. In the upcoming month, these students will get the second survey and make a chance at cool prices like Interrail passes and Amazon giftcards. Next to that, it is the turn of another round of finding students who will go abroad in the second semester, so all students going abroad this academic year (2015-2016) will be reached out to.
Every year hundreds of thousands of study abroad students travel to countries other than their own to pursue tertiary studies. During the academic year 2012-2013 nearly 270000 students from 33 European countries participated in the Erasmus programme (now Erasmus +) spending up to 10 months in countries across Europe. The typical Study Abroad Student is a cosmopolitan, well-educated young person with lots of interests related to cultural exchange, international education and life achievement. In spite of Study Abroad Students being a fast growing population of young people that more than doubled in the last ten years, little is known about their lifestyle during their period abroad.
When Svenja asked at Autumn Agora Kyïv who in the room had been abroad, she saw a lot of hands
raised. Many AEGEEans have studied abroad, are studying abroad or planning to do so. “Studying abroad and how it affects your lifestyle is therefore a relevant topic to our members”, says Svenja, “and with the results of this project we can visualize the effects of studying abroad on health and lifestyle, and hopefully give recommendations to ensure the health of students abroad. Besides that, since we have locals all over Europe, we can easily find students all over Europe, which is important for the research.”
AEGEE-Europe’s task in the project is to find the participants to fill in the survey. To do that, it has asked locals to spread the survey with study abroad students in their city. At the end of the project, AEGEE-Europe will organize a conference in Brussels to share the results of this project. Asking Svenja for the results of this project up to now, she replies: “Since the first round of the project already took place, we have the results of these participants, but the results we are aiming for are those that give a broader picture, including the data while abroad and after returning home.” The majority of people that filled in the survey is going abroad with Erasmus, but the research project is open to students that are studying abroad with all programs too.
Written by Matteo Lai, AEGEE-Cagliari