Mental health issues continue to affect a significant number of university students throughout the UK. One of the most widely reported concerns is anxiety, characterised by unpleasant feelings of nervousness and apprehension, as well as physical sensations such as numbness and heart-racing. Traditional pharmaceutical and therapeutic treatments have often shown to be of little effect, thus research has explored alternative ways to help manage debilitating symptoms. Accordingly, regular physical activity (PA) appears to be synonymous with lower levels of anxiety, and experimental studies have consistently reported an anxiolytic effect of acute bouts of PA. However, few studies have considered whether anxiety levels vary within different domains of PA, such as sport participation and exercise. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to conduct a cross-sectional survey to examine the correlation between total PA and anxiety, whilst also comparing the differences in anxiety between a) athletes versus recreational exercisers, and b) athletes of individual versus team sports. A total of 105 university students completed the online survey which included retrospective assessments of both overall PA and general symptoms. Results from a correlational analysis using Spearman’s Rho showed a weak and positive association between PA and anxiety (r = .25, p = .01). Mann-Whitney U tests indicated that anxiety scores were significantly higher among athletes compared to exercisers (U = 890.5, z = -2.07, p = .04), although there was no significant difference between individual and team sport athletes (U = 132.5, z = -.28, p = .82). Compared to non-athlete exercisers, these findings suggest anxiety may be more prevalent among students who play sports, although it is likely that anxiety in sport is influenced by a number of factors (level of competition, nature of the sport etc.), warranting further exploration.
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