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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Sport Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1491262
This article is part of the Research Topic Psychological Factors in Physical Education and Sport - Volume V View all 17 articles
Physical Exercise and Children's Resilience: Mediating Roles of Self-Efficacy and Emotional Intelligence
Provisionally accepted- 1 Konggang Jiayuan Primary School, Chongqing, China
- 2 Southwest University, Chongqing, Chongqing Municipality, China
- 3 Rose City South Experimental primary school, Chongqing, China
Purpose: This study aims to examine the inner relationship between children's physical exercise, self-efficacy, emotional intelligence, and resilience, and explore effective ways to promote the improvement of children's resilience. Methods: Using measurement tools such as the Physical Activity Rating Scale (PARS-3), the General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSES), the Chinese version of the Emotional Intelligence Scale (EIS), and the Adolescents Resilience Scale, we conducted a questionnaire survey was conducted among 700 primary school students in 4 primary schools. The SPSS 22.0 software was used to process and analyze the data, including correlation analysis, regression analysis, and Bootstrap analysis, and AMOS 21.0 software was used to establish a structural equation model. Results: 1) Physical exercise has a significant positive correlation with self-efficacy (r=0.29, p<0.001), emotional intelligence (r=0.32, p<0.001), and resilience (r=0.37, p<0.001), and there is also a significant positive correlation between emotional intelligence and resilience (r=0.30, p<0.001). 2) Physical exercise can directly and positively predict children's resilience (β1=0.38) and its five sub-dimensions, that is, physical exercise can positively predict goal concentration (β=0.35, p<0.001), emotional control (β=0.29, p<0.001), positive cognition (β=0.20, P<0.01), family support (β=0.33, p<0.001), interpersonal assistance (β=0.31, p<0.001), respectively. 3) Self-efficacy (SE=0.10) and emotional intelligence (SE=0.08) have partial mediating effects respectively on the relationship between physical exercise and resilience, and the chain mediation effect of self-efficacy and emotional intelligence also reaches a significant level (SE=0.02). Conclusion: Physical exercise can have a positive impact on children's resilience through self-efficacy and emotional intelligence, so schools or parents should attach importance to children's physical activities, which is an effective way to improve their resilience.
Keywords: physical exercise, Children, self-efficacy, Emotional Intelligence, resilience, chain mediating
Received: 04 Sep 2024; Accepted: 05 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Jiang, Wang and Qin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Hao Qin, Rose City South Experimental primary school, Chongqing, China
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