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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health Education and Promotion
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1544194
This article is part of the Research Topic Impact of Physical Activity on Health and Behavioral Risks in Adolescents View all articles

Physical activity and happiness of college students: chain mediating role of exercise attitude and sleep quality

Provisionally accepted
Kehan Li Kehan Li Dr Roxana Dev Omar Dev Dr Roxana Dev Omar Dev *Wenhao Li Wenhao Li
  • Putra Malaysia University, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    This study explored the role of physical activity, exercise attitude, and sleep quality in college students' happiness, and further provided a theoretical basis for improving college students' mental health. This study adopted a whole group sampling method.and used a physical activity level scale, exercise attitude scale, sleep quality scale and happiness scale to conduct a questionnaire survey on 1,308 college students from four universities in China.The analysis yielded the following three main findings:(1) Physical activity significantly improves college students' happiness, and this improvement can be achieved through direct and indirect effects. (2) Positive exercise attitude plays an important mediating role between physical activity and happiness, and a high level of exercise attitude can enhance happiness. In addition, the effect of physical activity on happiness is most significant through exercise attitude. (3) Although sleep quality did not significantly mediate the relationship between physical activity and happiness alone, it played a positive role in the chain mediation path of "exercise attitude → sleep quality → happiness". The discovery of the chain mediation path shows that physical activity not only affects psychological happiness, but also indirectly affects college students' overall happiness through the combined effects of psychological and physiological factors.

    Keywords: physical activity, Exercise attitude, sleep quality, happiness, college students

    Received: 12 Dec 2024; Accepted: 02 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Li, Omar Dev and Li. 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: Dr Roxana Dev Omar Dev, Putra Malaysia University, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia

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