ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1560859
This article is part of the Research TopicPromoting Inclusion and Representation: The Role of Cultural Diversity in SportsView all 19 articles
The Influence of College Students' Exercise Participation on Feelings of Self-Deficiency: The Mediating Effect of Social Support
Provisionally accepted
- 1Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China
- 2Hunan Trinity Industrial Vocational and Technical College, Changsha, Anhui Province, China
- 3Yongzhou Vocational Technical College, Yongzhou, Hunan, China
- 4Hunan University of Humanities, Science and Technology, Loudi, Hunan Province, China
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Objective: To explore the influence of college students' exercise participation on their feelings of self-deficiency and its mechanisms, with social support as a mediating variable.The study utilized the Physical Activity Rating Scale (PARS-3), the Feelings of Inadequacy Scale (FIS), and the Social Support Rating Scale (SSRS). A stratified random sampling method was used to select 981 college students from different provinces and universities for a questionnaire survey. Statistical methods, including confirmatory factor analysis, regression analysis, and the Bootstrap method, were employed for data analysis.Results: Exercise participation significantly and negatively predicted college students' feelings of self-deficiency. Social support exhibited a significant mediating effect between exercise participation and self-deficiency. Furthermore, the three dimensions of social support-subjective support, objective support, and support utilization-showed significant indirect effects. The mediation pathways were as follows: exercise participation → subjective support → self-deficiency, exercise participation → objective support → self-deficiency, and exercise participation → support utilization → self-deficiency.Exercise participation significantly reduces feelings of self-deficiency among college students, either directly or indirectly through social support. In the future, universities can help mitigate students' self-deficiency and promote their physical and mental well-being by optimizing physical activity spaces and constructing social support networks from the perspectives of exercise participation and social support.
Keywords: college students, Exercise participation, social support, self-deficiency, Mental Health
Received: 15 Jan 2025; Accepted: 23 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Xia, Liu, Luo, Fan, Tang, Tang and Zhang. 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:
Bo Liu, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China
Min Luo, Hunan Trinity Industrial Vocational and Technical College, Changsha, 410100, Anhui Province, China
Yunxiang Fan, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China
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