Abstract
Previous studies have shown that participation in leisure time physical activity is related to better mental well-being and subjective health. However, the associations between different types of leisure time physical activities and different dimensions of mental well-being have rarely been studied. In addition, longitudinal research, analyzing possible causal relations between these variables, is lacking. To investigate these research questions, data gathered at ages 42 and 50 (present N = 303) for the Finnish Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Personality and Social Development were used. Physical activity was assessed as frequency of participation at ages 42 and 50, and at age 50 also as frequency of participation in different types of physical activities. Mental well-being was captured by emotional, psychological and social well-being and subjective health by self-rated health and symptoms. Cross-sectionally, different types of physical activities were related to different dimensions of well-being. Walking had positive associations with psychological and social well-being, rambling in nature with emotional and social well-being, and endurance training with subjective health. Rambling in nature was also positively related to subjective health but only among men. Longitudinally, mental well-being predicted later participation in leisure-time physical activity, whereas no longitudinal associations between subjective health and physical activity were found. The results suggest that leisure time physical activities are related to current mental well-being and subjective health in midlife. Across time, good mental well-being seems to be a resource promoting engagement in physical activity.
Highlights
The Concept of Well-Being in this StudyThe term well-being is often used in the psychological literature but is defined in different ways in different research traditions
We refer to well-being as a subjective experience and conceptualize it using the tripartite model proposed by Keyes (2005), according to which mental well-being is not understood as the absence of ill-being (Keyes 2005; Ryan and Deci 2001; Seligman 2008)
All the different types of leisure time physical activity (LTPA) correlated positively with some well-being indicators at age 50, with the exception of group and team sports, which showed no associations with the well-being indicators
Summary
The term well-being is often used in the psychological literature but is defined in different ways in different research traditions. Psychological well-being indicates positive functioning in six domains: self-acceptance, positive relations with others, personal growth, purpose in life, environmental mastery and autonomy (Ryff 1989). Social well-being, measured along the dimensions of coherence, actualization, integration, acceptance and contribution, indicates how well an individual is functioning as a part of society and in meeting social challenges (Keyes 1998). In line with other research based on the same Finnish JYLS data (Kokko et al 2013a; Kokko et al 2015), we use the term mental wellbeing as defined in the Keyes’ tripartite model (Keyes 2005)
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