The relationship between physical activity levels and psychological resilience of college students

The Relationship between Physical Activity Levels and Psychological Resilience of College Students Introduction and Aim: While physical activity includes actions that cause the individual's energy consumption, psychological resilience is the mental resistance against negative situations. It is considered that sports i.e. regular physical activity strengthens individuals' psychological health. In this study, we aim to investigate the relationship between physical activity and psychological resilience levels. Materials and Methods: Target population of the study is Erzincan Binali Yıldırım University students, and its sample consists of 1734 students in total, where 725 are male and 1009 are female. Relational screening model is used in the research. 'Personal Information Form', 'International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ)' that is developed by Both (1996) and adapted to Turkish by Öztürk (2005) and 'Psychological Resilience Scale (PRS)' which is developed by Terzi (2016) were used as means of data collection. Defining statistics, Correlation, Regression, Chi-Square Independence Test, İndependent Sample t-Test, One Way Anova and Tukey's Test were used for the analysis of the data. The results were evaluated at the .05 and .01 levels. Findings: It has been observed that there is a relationship between students' physical activity levels and gender and body mass index. It is seen that males had higher physical activity levels than females, and thin people than people with normal weight and overweight. Significant differences were found between students' psychological resilience levels and age and body mass index (BMI). It was noted that psychological resilience levels increased as the age of the students increased and hat students with normal body mass index (BMI) had higher psychological resilience level than students with weak body mass index (BMI). In addition, it was shown that physical activity levels of students predicted psychological resilience levels .03%. Result: It has been identified that there is a positive, low level and linear relationship between physical activity and psychological resilience, and that physical activity is a variable which can predict psychological resilience. Keywords; Physical Activity, Psychological Resilience, University Students