Physical activity for post-secondary student mental health and social inclusion: Examining implementation considerations for impact and sustainability
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Physical activity (PA) is a promising yet underutilized mental health prevention strategy for post-secondary students, partly due to limited attention to implementation factors that affect scalability and effectiveness. This research program included four interrelated studies, aimed at understanding effective delivery formats and contextual considerations for implementing on-campus PA programs for student mental health (e.g., symptom reduction) and social inclusion (e.g., social connectedness). In Study 1, cross-sectional data from the Canadian Campus Well-being Survey (n = 9,575 students, 29% with a mental health condition) were used to examine associations between physical recreation engagement (e.g., intramural sport), psychosocial outcomes, PA guideline adherence, and academic achievement, and to explore differences among students living with and without a mental health condition. No significant differences were found, and promising targetable processes (e.g., social support, PA guideline adherence) to support mental health and social inclusion through campus-based PA programming were identified. Using a pre-post design, Study 2 was used to evaluate the impact of supervised one-on-one virtual (n = 62) and in-person (n = 117) PA on symptom reduction, social inclusion, and well-being among students, examining whether pre-post change in symptoms and social inclusion predicted well-being change, and whether change differed by delivery format. Both delivery formats were effective, and results supported the importance of targeting social inclusion indices in PA-based mental health prevention programs. In Study 3 a protocol was prepared to enhance replicability and scalability of research findings for a 3-arm parallel randomized controlled trial (RCT), examining supervised one-on-one and group-based PA compared to a waitlist control on student mental health, social outcomes, and PA behavior. Lastly, Study 4 was designed as a mixed methods hybrid effectiveness-implementation evaluation of the RCT (n = 115 students). The findings highlight how delivery format, a key contextual factor in the PA-mental health relationship, influences both effectiveness and implementation. Collectively, these findings offer scalable considerations to support the impact and sustainability of PA programs for mental health prevention among students. The findings highlight the broad social and mental health benefits of PA programming for students, aligning with prevention-oriented, holistic approaches increasingly advocated for on post-secondary campuses.
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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 | 0.010 | 0.020 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 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".