The relationship between children's habitual activity level and psychological well‐being

Aim: To explore the relationship between habitual physical activity and psychological well‐being in children. Methods: Seventy children (35 boys, 35 girls), age 10.4±0.4 y, wore hip pedometers over a period of 7 d. Well‐being was conceptualized as the presence of global self‐esteem and the absence of anxiety and depression and assessed with the use of three questionnaires. Results: Correlation analyses revealed that habitual physical activity had a strong association with global self‐esteem (r=0.66), depression (r=−0.60) and anxiety (r=−0.48). However, using partial correlations, the significant relationships were removed for anxiety and depression, but remained for self‐esteem (r=0.36). When groups were created based upon activity level, children achieving >12 000 steps/day had more positive psychological profiles than children achieving <9200 steps/day.

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