University of Twente Student Theses
The influence of context and mental activeness on the relationship between sedentary behaviour and mood : an experience sampling study
Hansen, F. (2021) The influence of context and mental activeness on the relationship between sedentary behaviour and mood : an experience sampling study.
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| Abstract: | University students are a highly sedentary subgroup of the population. High levels of sedentary behaviour (SB) are associated with various detrimental health effects. In the past years, SB has also increasingly been related to mental health risks like depression. However, most research of the past years has found inconsistent results concerning this relationship, and little is known about possible contributing factors. Therefore, this study has built upon a newly proposed framework to investigate the effect of context and mental activeness of SB on students’ mood. The daily sitting time of 34 (Mage = 22.38, SDage = 2.2; 76.5% female) university students was measured over the period of one week. Additionally, participants answered two momentary assessments per day about the sedentary context, mental activeness, and their state mood. Importantly, this study examined these aspects during the COVID-19 restrictions that obligated students to study from home. The results showed that university students sat 9.4 hours per day on average during a week of the pandemic. Students’ SB was mostly mentally active (70%) and during leisure (59%), and they perceived more positive than negative mood. Furthermore, visual analyses indicated that all these aspects, as well as their stability over time, could vary strongly between students. However, no significant relationships between daily sitting time, context or type of SB, and state mood were identified. The results from this study have shown the individual differences in sedentary characteristics and, thereby, demonstrated the complexity of SB. That is, additional analyses of selected cases indicated fluctuations in sitting time, contexts, and mental activeness over time as well as differences in these aspects between students. These findings further contribute to a more nuanced understanding of SB and its influence on students’ mood. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Bachelor) |
| Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
| Subject: | 77 psychology |
| Programme: | Psychology BSc (56604) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/87587 |
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