Exploring the Link Between Exercise Frequency and Anxiety Levels
School
Parkland College**We aren't endorsed by this school
Course
MAT 220
Subject
Sociology
Date
Dec 11, 2024
Pages
3
Uploaded by ConstableBadger917
Methods SectionParticipantsThe participants included in this study were directly recruited due to being registered in the Social and Psychological Aspects of Physical Activity class (HK 340) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign during the fall semester of 2024. With consent, 129 total participants (54 males, 75 females, 20.53 ±1.37 years, 24.91 ±4.35 kg/m2) went through the procedure and completed every step of the study. The participants self-reported whether they are regular exercisers or not, and most (n=108, 83.7%) did report they were regular exercisers. The study gave a broad and extensive range of diversity. This included 69 Caucasian, 32 Asian, 17 Hispanic/Latino, 5 African American, 2 Middle Easterner, 2 Multiethnic/racial, 1 South Asian, and 1 Black participants.Experimental DesignTo conduct the study, an exercise behavior questionnaire was given to the student participants in the beginning of the semester. This looked to assess some demographics of the 129 participants. Specifically, the demographics included age, race, biological sex, BMI, and major at the university. Also, the questionnaire looked for individual exercise behavior information, including whether they were a regular exerciser or not, exercise frequency, exercise duration, and exercise intensity. Then, mental health was assessed in the questionnaire which measured depression and anxiety. To receive exercise data, an accelerometer was given and worn by the participants. Finally, a 7-day self-reported exercise journal was filled out by all of the participants. In this study, we will be using data about anxiety and exercise frequency. Materials
As for individual assessments, the first online questionnaire started by asking key demographic questions. This exercise behavior questionnaire included questions about biological sex, gender identity, age, height, weight, and ethnicity among others. Further into the questionnaire, it asked questions pertaining to a person’s exercise habits to collect information about their retrospective exercise behaviors. More specifically, the participants were asked how many days a week they participate in exercise. This information will be used to determine participants' regular exercise frequency. The participants were then given another questionnaire regarding their mental health. The questions in this questionnaire were taken from the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (Stern, 2014). The questions related to anxiety were then put on a scale of 1-4 where 1 corresponds to little to no anxiety while 4 corresponds to high anxiety. These scores were then summed to give an overall anxiety score per individual. Statistical AnalysisTo test the hypothesis that high exercise frequency is associated with lower levels of anxiety, we used participants weekly exercise frequency and compared it to their sum anxiety scores from the two respective questionnaires. For this data, a Pearson’s Correlation will be used to compare weekly exercise frequency and sum anxiety scores to test for a r value which will determine if there is any correlation between the two. The expected r value for this data would be expected to be in the negative range, ranging closer to –1. A r value closer to –1 would indicate that higher exercise frequency correlates to lower anxiety while a score closer to 0 would indicate a looser correlation to no correlation at all. Any score ranging closer to 1 would indicate that higher exercise frequency correlates to higher anxiety and refutes the hypothesis.