6th Annual Judith Ramaley Celebration of Research and Creative Scholarship
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Poster #35 The Relation between Exercise and Mental Health Jade Fiedler Faculty Mentor: Jess Siebenbruner It has been assumed that exercise is correlated with depression and anxiety. Research has suggested that exercise is associated with lower levels of depression and anxiety symptoms. The hypothesis for the current study is that there would be a negative correlation between exercise and mental health symptoms. Correlations and independent samples t-test were conducted. Most of the correlations and t-tests were not significant but a few findings did emerge. People who chose to exercise for aerobic reasons were more likely to have higher levels of anxiety than those who did not choose to exercise for aerobic reasons. Along with that, people who chose to exercise via cardio and aerobics were also significantly more likely to work out for affiliation reasons over those who did not. There was a correlation between having depression symptoms and choosing exercise for self-recognition reasons. Lastly, there was a significant relationship between anxiety and depression leaving one to consider co morbidity. A lack of other significant results may be due to sample size being small, or maybe there is a third factor influencing exercise and mental health that was not assessed in the current study. For future research, I would gather a larger sample to bring about more significant results, tie in self-esteem to see if there was a connection with depression/anxiety and exercise, and I would ask more questions about the participants personal life and how exercising affects them. |
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