A Study On The Effect Of Physical Exercise On Psychological Stress And Coping For The Urban Middle-aged

Along with the implementation of nationwide body-building plan, and the better economic condition and more spare time of the people in modern society, more and more people take the physical exercise as one of their avocations, so various good effects of the physical exercise have been approved by the people gradually. As core force of the society and the family, the middle-aged need to reply all kinds of stress and attacks from the society, the family and the occupation. Can the physical exercise have a good effect on relieving their psychological stress and improving their coping style?Aiming at this situation, we did some reseach on the urban middle-aged. Objective:Whether the physical exercise was the important factor which influenced the psychological stress of the urban middle-aged, except the social support and self-esteem. This study analyzed the differences on the physical exercise between stress consciousness and coping style of the urban middle-aged, because they may relieve the psychological stress. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the stress clustered in the urban middle-aged, and whether individuals of these clusters also differed in different types of physical exercise. Design:Cross-sectional study in a randomly chosen community based sample of the urban middle-aged in Xi'an district.Method:Chose 400 middle-aged Xi'an citizens aged 35～59 to be the sample, excluding two types of testee who suffered the important familial emergency recently and these who were the participator of physical exercise. On the basis of the interview and investigation to some urban middle-aged people, we carried out the questionnaire survey. Under inspection of the examiner, the testee filled the questionnaire survey about physical exercise, stress consciousness, coping style and demographic characteristic. All effective questionnaire deta recycling from this study were put into the computer, and we made the t-test, the interrelated inspection and the regression analysis to the interrelated statistical data using the statistical software of SPSS17.0 for windows.The main results of this study were as follows:1.The independent sample t-test on the stress consciousness of the urban middle-aged cluster who were exercisers and the others who were not. The results displayed, the stress consciousness of the urban middle-aged cluster who were exercisers had some differences from the others who were not, the former cluster showed as low levels of stress and positive response, and the latter cluster showed quite the reverse.2.The bivariate analysis on the exercising scores, stress consciousness and response of the urban middle-aged cluster who were exercisers. The results displayed, the scores of the exercising cluster were related to stress consciousness and response. They got high score,low stress consciousness and high positive response.3. In order to eliminate the effects that demographic variable brought to data differences, we did regression analysis, taking the demographic variable of the the urban middle-aged cluster who were exercisers(including different sex, marriage or not, age, annual income and state of health)as the first level of the stratified regression, taking the scores of stress consciousness as induced variable, taking the physical exercise, the total score of social support and self-esteem as independent variable. The results displayed, the scores of the exercising cluster had some predictive effects on stress consciousness.4.The conclusions and proposals of this study:The psychological stress clustered in the urban middle-aged, and the individuals of them differed in different types of physical exercise. The participation of physical exercise was of great benefit to the cluster aged 35～39. The urban middle-aged should take an active part in physical exercise and need to persevere with the activities. All of the problems were worth to think,such as how long the exercise should do every time, how many times one week, do the exercise in which time of the day is good enough to sound mind and body, and how to remain unchanged exercise for a long period of time.