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Adviser
College is the period where students experience a tremendous shift in their lives due to their newfound independence thus influencing their management of stress, diet, and overall health. Females, on the other hand, are known to harbor extreme stress, have poor dietary habits, and have menstrual cycle irregularity during their college years due to academic demands. This study aimed to determine the association of perceived academic stress, menstrual cycle status, and dietary habits of female university students. A cross-sectional design study was utilized in the study where a total of 257 female students from College of Human Ecology, UPLB were selected using a simple random sampling technique. The respondents were given an online survey in which their responses were then collected and analyzed through descriptive statistics and Pearson’s correlation analysis. The results showed that majority of the female students have low academic stress (37.74%). With regards to their menstrual cycle status, most of them have a normal menstrual cycle (78.60%) whereas only 21.40% had reported irregularity in their menstrual cycle. Moreover, most of the respondents obtained an average score for their dietary habits (63.04%). As for the association, it showed that perceived academic stress and age has a weak negative association (r = -.217, p = .000) while age to menstrual cycle status and dietary habits presented a very weak positive association (r = .003, p = .959) and very weak negative association (r = -.092, p = .112), respectively with p-values greater than 0.05 thus signifying a minimal relationship. Furthermore, the results also revealed a very weak negative association between perceived academic stress and dietary habits (r = -.089, p = .153), and perceived academic stress and menstrual cycle status (r = -.099, p = .141) while there was a very weak positive association between menstrual cycle status and dietary habits (r = .016, p = .798) however, based on their p-value, there was no sufficient evidence that there was a true relationship between them indicating that there is a minimal relationship between perceived academic stress, menstrual cycle status, and dietary habits of female university students.