Chinese College Students’ Physical-Exercise Behavior, Negative Emotions, and Their Correlation during the COVID-19 Outbreak

Background: In the period of the COVID-19 pandemic, the level of college students’ physical exercise, the detection rate of negative emotions, and their correlation should attract extensive attention. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the correlation between college students’ physical exercise and negative emotions. Methods: Data were collected via a web-based cross-sectional survey. A questionnaire survey was conducted among 3118 college students from five universities in Shanghai in March 2022. In addition to sociodemographic information, measures included Physical Activity Rating Scale (PARS-3) and Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS). The chi-squared test and logistic regression were used to analyze the differences and test the relative risk of negative emotions caused by different amounts of physical exercise. Results: Most students (66.1%) performed a small amount of physical exercise. Male students’ physical-exercise level was higher than female students’, and the detection rate of negative emotions was lower than that of female students. Moderate and low physical-exercise levels were associated with a higher risk of depression (beta of 0.289 and 0.345, respectively) and anxiety (beta of 0.301 and 0.418) symptoms than high physical-exercise level. Conclusions: The anxiety symptoms of college students were significant during the COVID-19 pandemic period. The physical-exercise behavior of college students was closely related to negative emotions, and the weakening of physical-exercise behavior was one of the factors that induced negative emotions in college students.