Does Increased Physical Activity Explain the Psychosocial Benefits of Sport Participation During COVID-19?
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Abstract
Although the return to sports during COVID-19 has been associated with improvements in mental health and quality of life (QOL), whether these benefits are primarily due to increases in physical activity (PA) is unknown.
Objective
To determine whether PA increases were responsible for the improvements in mental health and QOL among adolescents who returned to sport during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Design
Cross-sectional study.
Setting
Wisconsin secondary schools.
Patients or Other Participants
A total of 559 adolescent athletes (age = 15.7 + 1.2 years, females = 43.6%) from 44 schools completed a survey in October 2020.
Main Outcome Measure(s)
Demographic information, whether they had returned to sport participation, school instruction type, anxiety (Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7), depression (Patient Health Questionnaire-9), QOL (Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory 4.0), and PA (Hospital for Special Surgery Pediatric Functional Activity Brief Scale). Mediation analysis was used to assess whether the relationships between sport status and anxiety, depression, and QOL were mediated by PA.
Results
At the time of the study, 171 (31%) had returned to play and 388 (69%) had not. Athletes who had returned to play had less anxiety (3.6 ± 0.4 versus 8.2 ± 0.6, P < .001) and depression (4.2 ± 0.4 versus 7.3 ± 0.6, P < .001) and higher QOL (88.1 ± 1.0 versus 80.2 ± 1.4, P < .001) and more PA (24.0 ± 0.5 versus 16.3 ± 0.7, P < .001). Physical activity explained a significant, but small, proportion of the difference in depression (22.1%, P = .02) and QOL (16.0%, P = .048) but not anxiety (6.6%, P = .20) between athletes who had and those who had not returned to play.
Conclusions
Increased PA was responsible for only a small portion of the improvements in depression and QOL among athletes who returned to sports. This suggests that most of the mental health benefits of sport participation for adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic were independent of the benefits of increased PA.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2022.01.11.22269077: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics IRB: This study was approved by the University of Wisconsin Health Sciences Institutional Review Board in September 2020. Sex as a biological variable Wisconsin high school athletes (male and female, grade: 9–12, age: 13-19) were recruited to participate in the study by completing an anonymous online survey in October 2020. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Cell Line Authentication Authentication: This represents a measure of overall physical activity that has been validated in adolescents[16] and has published normative adolescent data.[ Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect …
SciScore for 10.1101/2022.01.11.22269077: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics IRB: This study was approved by the University of Wisconsin Health Sciences Institutional Review Board in September 2020. Sex as a biological variable Wisconsin high school athletes (male and female, grade: 9–12, age: 13-19) were recruited to participate in the study by completing an anonymous online survey in October 2020. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Cell Line Authentication Authentication: This represents a measure of overall physical activity that has been validated in adolescents[16] and has published normative adolescent data.[ Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:This study has several limitations. Although we attempted to account for differences between the groups with respect to age, sex, and school instruction type through adjusted models, it is possible that other factors that differ between the DNP and PLY groups are not accounted for could confound our results. We cannot be certain that the differences in PA are entirely explained by participation in sports as athletes in both groups may have sources of PA outside of sports. We did not directly measure differences between groups with respect to factors that could potentially influence psychosocial outcomes, such as the social benefits or athletic identity, and can only speculate about the role that these may play in influencing the differences between groups. It is unknown if the relationships between PA and psychosocial outcomes in adolescent athletes during the COVID-19 pandemic will differ after the pandemic is over. Finally, this analysis represents a group of adolescent athletes from a single state, which may not be generalizable to other populations.
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
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