Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2010, 7 4 ample support for the critical need to study this area, especially as today‘s students are the future professionals and are expected to serve as role models. In order to address these gaps, the study detailed in this paper examined the triad of associations that are important for university students: (1) three demographic variables (age, gender, student‘s financial situation); (2) a range of students‘ health and health behaviour variables; (3) students‘ satisfaction with their educational experience (18 different satisfaction variables); and, (4) three (two subjective and one objective) indicators of educational achievement. To the best of our knowledge, this study could be the first to simultaneously operationalise the three related notions (health, educational satisfaction, academic performance) and control for such a number of variables. For the purpose of this paper, we use the terms student ‗achievement‘ and ‗performance‘ interchangeably. 1.2. Conceptual Framework Educational achievement can be conceptualized and measured in different ways: (1) as students‘ internal reflection on their academic achievement in terms of the importance they attach to achieving good grades in their studies; (2) as students‘ subjective comparative appraisal of their overall academic performance in comparison with their peers; and, (3) as an external objective teacher evaluation of the students‘ overall academic performance as denoted by the final module marks or grades that students achieve in their course assessment/s. We employed the three measures of educational achievement (internal reflection, subjective comparative, external objective). Such a tri-furcated conceptualization of the varieties of educational outcomes is supported by research in the achievement goal tradition. Two types of goals have been suggested: performance goals (ego involvement or ability goals), which focus on the demonstration of competence relative to others; and mastery goals (task-involvement or learning goals), which focus on the development of competence and task mastery [45]. As such, achievement goals are conceptualized as the purpose [46] or cognitive-dynamic focus [47] of task engagement. In addition, we argue that educational achievement is largely dependent on motivational factors: students who rate the importance of good grades high would be more likely to achieve good grades; and conversely, indicators of positive performance increase the likelihood of rating the achievement of good grades as important. The satisfaction of students with their educational experience could also affect academic outcomes. Our analysis is driven by the theoretical assumption of reciprocal relationships between health awareness, health behaviours and health, motivation for academic performance and academic outcomes as depicted in Figure 1. Socio-economic factors serve in this model as background variables that may influence academic outcomes directly or through influencing, health, health behaviours or motivation. We are aware, however, that the analysis presented in this article is not able to test the relationships between the factors presented in Figure 1.