Abstract
College students at university have to face several stress factors. Although sports practice has been considered as having beneficial effects upon stress and general health, few studies have documented its influence on this specific population. The aim of this comparative study was to determine whether the intensity of the college students’ sports practice (categorized into three groups: rare, regular, or intensive) would influence their levels of stress and self-efficacy, their coping strategies, and their academic success/failure. Three self-completion questionnaires were administered to 1071 French freshmen during their compulsory medical visit at the preventive medicine service of the university. Results indicated that students with intensive sport practice reported lower scores of general stress, academic stress, and emotion-focused coping strategies, and higher scores of self-efficacy than those with rare practice. However, the proportion of successful students did not differ significantly between the three groups of sports practice.
Highlights
Perceived as a stressful, yet exciting experience, transition from high school to university is part of most individuals’ life trajectories
Physical exercise clearly appears as an effective way of coping with stress, and these results provide scientific supports regarding the importance of physical activity promotion as an effective way to help college students cope with the stress-related to their from high school to university
Considering the literature on the influence of stress and coping strategies upon academic success, and on the positive effects of sports practice on stress, we suggest that sports practice might be liable to influence academic success
Summary
Perceived as a stressful, yet exciting experience, transition from high school to university is part of most individuals’ life trajectories. On the one hand, arriving at university is generally characterized by a separation from the family (McNamara, 2000) and corresponds to the stage of life called “emerging adulthood” (Arnett, 2004), the last before adulthood (Towbes and Cohen, 1996). During this time, between when one leaves home and, and when one gets involved in marriage, parenthood, and has a stable job, students have the possibilities to explore different roles in love – different partners – and work – study reorientation, part-time jobs. It can be difficult to go from a classroom of 30–40 familiar peoples to a lecture theater of several hundred unknowns (Coulon, 2000)
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