A descriptive study on physical activity and health state of university students

Abstract

Prevalence of poor mental health is a global issue that requires proper designing and implementation of policies to tackle, and physical activity has been shown to affect mental health among general populations. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between physical activity and mental health among university students in Singapore. 100 participants from Nanyang Technological University were recruited for this study and their levels of physical activity and mental health were measured using the IPAQ - Short Form and GHQ-12 respectively while the data were analysed using SPSS. A two-tailed Spearman’s rank order correlation was run with the level of significance set at 0.05. The results showed a very weak positive correlation that is statistically insignificant (rs(98)=0.055, p=0.590). Therefore, future policies to improve mental health of university students in Singapore should consider placing emphasis on other aspects instead of physical activity as the psychological benefits of physical activity might be limited or insignificant for this population.