Abstract

Background: Working professional students combine paid employment with formal higher education and often with caregiving responsibilities, yet remain underrepresented in lifestyle research and are frequently subsumed within general student samples. Objective: This narrative review synthesises evidence on physical activity, sedentary behaviour, dietary behaviour, sleep, and stress, burnout and well-being among working professional students and related employed student groups, and integrates the findings into a testable conceptual model. Methods: Guided by the SANRA criteria for narrative reviews, PubMed/PMC, Scopus, Web of Science, ERIC and Google Scholar were searched from database inception to March 2026 using defined Boolean strings, English-language limits and pre-specified eligibility criteria. Approximately sixty records were assessed in full text, and thirty-nine sources informed the thematic synthesis. No statistical pooling was undertaken, and direct evidence was drawn from employed or working students. Results: Work–study demands appear to shape lifestyle largely indirectly, through time pressure, role conflict, boundary permeability and reduced recovery opportunity. The most direct evidence concerns work–study conflict, stress, burnout and well-being; findings for sedentary behaviour, dietary behaviour and physical activity are substantially extrapolated from general student or adult populations and are labelled as such. Employment is not uniformly harmful: where schedules are predictable, job–study congruence is high and institutional support exists, financial and developmental benefits may buffer strain. Conclusion: A coordinated, multicomponent approach coupling individual behaviour change with institutional and workplace scheduling reform is warranted, and the framework should be tested longitudinally within defined working-student subgroups rather than undifferentiated student samples.

Keywords

Working Professional Students, Lifestyle Behaviours, Physical Activity, Sleep, Work–Study Conflict,

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