Impact Of Physical Activity On Children And Adolescents Psychological Adjustment: A Meta-Analysis

Background: There are divided thoughts and findings regarding the association between physical activity and psychological adjustment among the youth.Data shows a positive association between physical activity and psychological adjustment among children and adolescents;evidence shows that when physical activity is incorporated into children’s and adolescent’s life,they do well physically,emotionally and perform better in school.However,research on physical activity and adjustment among children and adolescents is in the early stage.Therefore adopting a meta-analytic approach,the purpose of the study was to examine the relationship between physical activity and domains of psychological adjustment among children and adolescents.Two broad domains of psychological adjustment were examined,i.e.psychological/mental well-being and ill health,and academic performance and cognitive function.In this study,psychological/mental well-being and ill health includes depression/anxiety,aggression,self-esteem and happiness in children and adolescents.Also,the study focused on the relationship between physical activity and academic performance and cognitive function in children and adolescents.Method: The researcher conducted the literature search between August and September2021,and additional papers were added in 2022.The researcher identified papers through online databases such as Sports Discus,Pysch Net,and Google scholar.Through the search,180 papers were identified,and after thorough screening based on the eligibility criteria,38 papers remained and were used for this study.Studies were used if they included quantitative data on physical activity/exercise and one or more psychological well-being and ill health(depression,anxiety,aggression,self-esteem,happiness)or cognitive function and academic performance outcomes in children or adolescents.Also,the study must have been conducted among school children and adolescents between the ages of 4 to 20 years(males and females)who were not diagnosed with mental health problems.The last criteria were published studies in English and peer-reviewed journals within the past two decades(i.e.2000-2022).The metaanalysis was conducted using the random effect model.The study also adopted the "standardized mean difference"(SMD)to estimate the random effect size.The "SMD" gives the overall effect of the study by taking the difference between the treated and control group and dividing by the standard deviations(treated minus the control).The result is a mean difference standardized to measure the overall estimate of the actual effect for each study.SMD values of 0.2-0.5 are considered small,values of 0.5-0.8 are considered medium,and values > 0.8 are considered large.A positive SMD indicates that the treatment group has an increase in the mean score compared to the control group whereas a negative value means that the treatment group has a decrease in the mean score.The study used Rstudios software version 4.0.5 for data analysis.Results: The main findings of this study were that the level of depression/anxiety among children in the control group(children who did not undertake physical activity)was high compared to those in the treatment group(children who engaged in physical activity).However,there was no significant impact of gender groups in explaining the effect of physical activity on depression or anxiety in children.These findings can be attributed to the heterogeneity(differences among papers used)in the literature used for the meta-analysis.The results also showed that physical activity is associated with a reduction in aggression and an increase in self-esteem.The effect was found to be stronger for aerobic exercise than for strength training.The effect was also found to be moderated by age and gender,with the effects being stronger for adolescents than for children and for males than for females.Also,active children were seen to do well academically.In addition,the findings indicated that physical activity had a positive and significant impact on the cognitive abilities of children and adolescents.More so,children and adolescents who were engaged in physical activity were seen to be happy as compared to their inactive counterparts.Lastly,gender had a significant and positive effect of physical exercise on the academic performance.The impact of physical activity on the academic performance of male was negative(SMD=-0.0208,p<0.0001)but positive for female(SMD=0.0387,p-value<0.0001).Conclusion: In summary,children,and adolescents who were inactive experienced high levels of anxiety/depression,aggression and low self-esteem.More so,it was found that physical activity positively affected children’s and adolescents’ academic performance and cognitive function.There was no impact of gender groups in explaining the effect of physical activity on depression or anxiety in children and adolescents.Rather females seemed to benefit more from physical activities in terms of academic and cognitive performance.Based on the current study’s findings,it would be suggested that children and adolescents should be encouraged to engage in physical activities,at least for their emotional well-being.More studies on the association between physical activities and children and adolescents’ adjustment are needed in the future,and the mediating and moderating factors in the association are necessary to be examined.