Associations between physical activity, stress, interpersonal relationship and quality of life in university students

The purpose of this study was to analyze the associations between physical activity and stress, interpersonal relationship, and the quality of life in university students. The subjects of this study were 400 healthy university students and 337 questionnaires were used for data analysis. Physical activity was classified into three groups: Low Group (n = 105), Moderate Group (n = 112) and High Group (n = 120) according to the scoring system using the Korean version of IPAQ short form. In addition, PWI, Relationship Scale, and WHOQOL-BREF were used. Statistical analysis (SPSS Window version 24.0) was performed by chi-square test, one-way ANOVA, and covariance. The high and moderate groups got statistically significantly lower total scores for PWI, which indicates level of stress, than the low group (P<0.01). The high group got statistically significantly higher total scores for interpersonal relationship than the low group (P<0.05). When age, sex, grade, smoking, alcohol drinking, number of breakfasts per week, and activity of daily living were corrected to determine the associations between physical activity and stress, interpersonal relationship, and the quality of life, the high and moderate groups got significantly lower scores for PWI than the low group (P<0.05) and the high group got significantly higher scores for interpersonal relationship than the low group (P<0.05). Therefore, this result suggests that physical activity in healthy university students may affect stress and interpersonal relationships, even if they have no difference in quality of life.