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Kaur – Adding Pep to Your Step: Understanding the Relationship Between Steps and Stress in College-Aged Students

 

Adding Pep to Your Step: Understanding the Relationship Between Steps and Stress in College-Aged Students (2024)

Undergraduate: Harliv Kaur


Faculty Advisor: Dr. Annie Green Howard
Department: Biostatistics

This study aims to dive deeper into the associations between daily activity levels and perceived stress outcomes in college-aged populations. The objective is to help quantify the relationship to provide applicable and efficient advice in aiding the mental health epidemic seen in this young-adult population. Descriptive statistics were calculated for the total sample of 96 participants and tests for significant differences between quartiles of physical activity levels were conducted. We used linear regression to observe multiple models, using physical activity measures as quartiles and as a continuous variable. For all models, there was consistently an increase in the average PSS-10 scores as quartiles of physical activity levels decreased. There was a significant difference between the quartile average PSS-10 scores for the unadjusted and minimally adjusted models, but not when controlled for height, weight, sex, and ethnicity in addition to age and sex. When testing for trend, there was a statistically significant association for all models, with the strongest p-value coming from the minimally adjusted models. The data provided by this study sufficiently shows how strong the PSS-10 is associated with physical activity in a day-to-day lifestyle and how relevant height, weight, race, and ethnicity are to the relationship in a college-aged population.