Comparison between mobile fitness apps users and gender on exercise intensity in university students

Abstract

University students are an exclusive subcategory because most of them are young adults at a transformation period, training to stay independently while concurrently working toward completion of their professional degrees. Previous research reported that only 30% to 50% of university students meet the recommended proportion of exercise for health advantage. Mobile fitness apps are invented on purpose to support exercise. Many health advantages like preventing cardiovascular diseases and diabetes, it will marshal exercise and as mobile motivational tools because motivation is a major barrier to exercise. The present study was designed to investigate and compare the exercise intensity between the mobile fitness app users and none-users. The secondary purpose was to examine and compare the exercise intensity between gender from the university students. A total three hundred fifty-five university students were recruited in the study. The International Physical Activity Questionnaires- Short Form (IPAQ-SF) was used to collect exercise intensity of the participants in current study. All participants have been briefed on the objectives of this study and agreed to answer the International Physical Activity Questionnaires (IPAQ) and signed an informed consent form. The independent t-tests to determine the differences of the exercise intensity between mobile fitness app users and nonmobile fitness users. Independent t-tests also to find-out differences exercise intensity between gender in the university students, the statistical significance was set at p < .05. There were significant differences of exercise intensity level between nonmobile fitness apps users and mobile fitness apps users [ t (352) = 2.82, p = .005, d = 0.28]. It means the nonmobile fitness apps users had a significant higher exercise intensity if compared to the mobile fitness apps users. There were significant differences of exercise intensity level between male and female university students [ t (352) = 4.54, p = .001, d = 0.48]. Current results are similar to many studies found that female students participated in less exercise than their male counterparts.