The effect of office exercises on mental well-being and enjoyment of physical activity in individuals working at a desk

The aim of the study is to investigate whether office exercises have an impact on the mental well-being and enjoyment of physical activity among individuals working at desks. This study was designed as a weak experimental study. A pretest-posttest control group research model was applied in the research. The universe of the study consists of 200 municipal police officers working in desk jobs at the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Police Department. Of these 200 personnel, 100 form the control group and 100 form the experimental group. In the study, the Enjoyment of Physical Activity Scale, developed by Mullen et al. (2011) and adapted into Turkish by Özkurt et al. (2022), as well as the Turkish adaptation of Keldal's (2015) Mental Well-being Scale were used. Additionally, the survey technique was employed in the data collection process, and a Personal Information Form including participants' demographic information was used. In the data analysis, licensed SPSS 25 software was used to conduct all statistical tests on survey data. Normal distribution analysis was applied to determine whether the assumption of normality was met, and it was found that the variables satisfied this assumption. Therefore, parametric tests were employed for further analysis. Normality tests, paired samples t-tests, and frequency analyses were utilized. A significance level of p<0.05 was accepted for the study. Independent samples t-test indicated a significant difference (p>0.05). Consequently, the hypotheses that "There is a difference in mental well-being scale between control and experimental groups of desk-based workers after initiating office exercises" and "There is a difference in enjoyment of physical activity scale between control and experimental groups of desk-based workers after initiating office exercises" were confirmed. As a result, it was observed that engaging in office exercises positively influences individuals' mental well-being and enjoyment of physical activity.