Exploring the physical activity experiences of adolescent girls through the lens of mental health and body image
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Physical activity (PA) has been suggested as a strategy to promote youth mental well-being, yet most adolescent girls are insufficiently active. While PA has been identified as a strategy for promoting positive body image, the way body image and mental health are experienced concurrently, and in the context of PA, has not been explored. The purpose of this study was to explore adolescent girls’ mental health and body image to better understand how PA experiences are navigated and negotiated. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven adolescent girls (ages 15-17 years). Following a qualitative description approach, data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Based on the findings, four themes were identified: (1) body image is impossible to separate from mental health, (2) type and context of PA can be both protective and threatening, (3) social comparisons are unavoidable, and (4) peers are essential for navigating body image and mental health. Overall, organized sport was described as isolating and discouraging with potential poor effects on body image and mental health. Girls recognized PA as essential to well-being; however, they described PA as difficult to maintain when experiencing negative body-related self-thoughts. Given these qualitative results, strategies to promote PA adherence while minimizing negative experiences may require a multifaceted approach, prioritizing social and emotional well-being, management of body image concerns, and promotion of self-confidence. These findings help advance the conceptualizations of body image and mental health and further the understanding of the interplay between these constructs in the context of adolescent girls’ PA.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".