PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AND GENERAL EMOTION OF ADOLESCENT STUDENTS: THE FIELD-LEVEL STUDY IN INDIA AND FIJI

Background: Mental health problems are growing during adolescent period in modern societies. The role of physical activity on the mitigation of the mental health (e.g., general emotion) is not widely accepted. The objective of this study is to investigate whether the influence of physical activity has made any favourable impact on general emotion of adolescent students.

Methods: The study relies on the positivist/quantitative paradigm and elicits cause–effect relationships to draw robust findings. In order to do so, a structured questionnaire was developed to capture the responses for the construction of proposed variables required in such analysis. They are physical activity (PA), physical activity self-efficacy (PSE) and general emotion (GE). The responses on each instrument have been taken from 873 adolescent students (participants) of class 10th standard from 16 schools selected from rural and urban areas in India and Fiji. Taking the responses on ten point scale, the indices have been constructed for the above mentioned variables. However, actual time spent on difference activities in a week time was taken for the construction of level of physical activity The instrument used for constructing indices of sociopsychological variables like PSE and GE have been validated by reliability test using Cronbach’s alpha test. Then, principal component method has been run to find actual weights to be attached to the respective questions qualified in the reliability test. Finally, regression method has been applied to establish the relationships among the variables.

Results: The statistical results show that the regression coefficients of PA on PSE and PSE on GE have been found positive and statistically significant respectively.

Conclusion: The adolescent students can acquire physical activity self-efficacy by participating in physical activity. The acquired physical activity self-efficacy improves their general emotion in addition to the biological development. School must emphasis curriculum more on how to participate on physical activity.