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The relationship between children's habitual activity level and psychological well‐being
Author(s) -
Parfitt Gaynor,
Eston Roger G
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
acta pædiatrica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.772
H-Index - 115
eISSN - 1651-2227
pISSN - 0803-5253
DOI - 10.1111/j.1651-2227.2005.tb01855.x
Subject(s) - anxiety , physical activity , psychological well being , medicine , depression (economics) , association (psychology) , clinical psychology , well being , developmental psychology , psychology , physical therapy , psychiatry , economics , psychotherapist , macroeconomics
Aim: To explore the relationship between habitual physical activity and psychological well‐being in children. Methods: Seventy children (35 boys, 35 girls), age 10.4±0.4 y, wore hip pedometers over a period of 7 d. Well‐being was conceptualized as the presence of global self‐esteem and the absence of anxiety and depression and assessed with the use of three questionnaires. Results: Correlation analyses revealed that habitual physical activity had a strong association with global self‐esteem ( r =0.66), depression ( r =−0.60) and anxiety ( r =−0.48). However, using partial correlations, the significant relationships were removed for anxiety and depression, but remained for self‐esteem ( r =0.36). When groups were created based upon activity level, children achieving >12 000 steps/day had more positive psychological profiles than children achieving <9200 steps/day. Conclusion: The results support the findings from previous studies that have explored the relationship between physical activity and well‐being, but represent the first to use a mechanical measure of physical activity over a 7‐d period to assess the relationships. The actual step counts associated with more positive psychological well‐being can be shown to be in line with the recommended guidelines that children accumulate a minimum of 60 min of moderate‐intensity activity per day.