Does Physical Activity Have an Impact on Self-Esteem? Essay Example

back to mothers soothing their babies with milk when the baby cries, the main principle of comfort eating is that some form of sadness, from loneliness to bored, causes an individual to eat.

If this sadness is due to low self esteem caused by obesity or just being a little over weight then other than sensible dieting an increase in physical activity can cut out both the eight problem and the problem of comfort eating, saving money and, if the participant is mortally obese, even lives. It is factors like this that make me question the effect physically activity has on an individual’s self esteem. I predict to will see a positive and reasonable correlation between self esteem and physical activity, ergo, if a participants response is high for the amount of physical activity they participant in, their self esteem should also be high and the same in a reverse way, the lower the amount of physical activity a participant says they take part in, the lower self esteem score I expect to see. Method ParticipantsAll Participants were undergraduate students from the University of Gloucestershire.

They were selected using an opportunity sample from around the campus, halls, second year lectures in psychology and creative writing, this is to ensure a variance in results and to prevent collecting data from a group. Design For this correlational study the research was conducted as a within subject design, both questionnaires were completed by the same participant in one sitting as the questionnaires were fused together so the participant did not have their opinions swayed if they began to work out what the experiment was trying to research.To counterbalance any order

effects the questionnaires were randomly presented to participants. This counterbalanced any fatigue or other order effects that participants of the within subject design may have been experiencing. Questionnaires were also stapled together with one half of all questionnaires having questions on physical activity first and self esteem second and the other half in the reverse order, this was to attempt to counter balance any bias that may have been created in the participants minds by questions they answered first. Apparatus/MaterialsAn ethics proposal form, consent form and two questionnaires were required.

Rosenberg’s Self-esteem scale (1965) was used as a model for an original self esteem questionnaire and an original physical activity questionnaire was also used. These two questionnaires were selected as they could allow easy correlation as one uses a Likert Scale and the other open ended numerical values. To analyse the data the computer program SPSS will also be used. Basic questions were asked such as height, weight, gender, age and course to ease the participant into answering questions.The physical activity questionnaire asked height and weight at the top whilst the self esteem questionnaire asked age, gender and course first, this was to ensure that whichever order the participant received the questionnaires in they would have simple questions to start them off.

An example of one of the physical activity questionnaire questions is; How many hours a week do you exercise a strenuous amount (heart beats rapidly)? ____ where and an answer such as ‘5’ could have been inputted.A question from the self esteem questionnaire read as; Please select from the following as responses for each question; SA(strongly agree), A(agree), N(neither agree nor disagree), D(disagree) or SD(strongly

disagree). Do you feel you have a lot to be proud of? Where a an answer of ’SA‘ would have been acceptable (see appendix for full questions from questionnaires). Procedure After approaching a potential subject they were asked if they wanted to participate in a psychology experiment which would only take around ten minutes of their time.

The consent form was presented to them before the questionnaires and after they read and signed it the standardised instructions were given (see appendix). Questionnaires were presented to them in one stapled together pack, although they were in different orders in different packs. Participants were asked to fill out the questionnaires in silence and without conferring with others. Once the questionnaire was completed the researcher gave a debriefing that included a contact e-mail in case they had any queries or troubles later and checked there were no questions from the participants at the time. ResultsExcluding the five general questions used to ease participants into answering questions (age, gender, height, weight and course of study) the physical activity questionnaire consisted of ten questions as did the self esteem questionnaire. As not all participants filled in their height and weight participants are being identified by their course, age and gender.

To analyse the data collected two different scoring systems have been devised, the first a scoring system much like Rosenburg’s was used in the self esteem questionnaire. ‘SA‘ was worth 5 ‘points’, ‘A’ was worth four, ‘N’; 3, ‘D’;2 and ‘SD’ was worth 1.On the questionnaire questions two, six, eight and nine had their scores reversed due to the nature of the question being negatively posed. With this scoring system in place

the minimum a participant could score was 10 points and the maximum a participant could score was 50 points, thus a potential range of 40.

Much the same with the physical activity questionnaire a scoring system was again devised however not all questions were used to create a score for the participants. The questions used for creating a score for physical activity were the following three; How many hours a week do you exercise a strenuous amount (heart beats rapidly)?, How many hours a week do you exercise a moderate amount (not exhausting)? and How many hours a week do you exercise a mild amount (minimal effort)?. For the first question for every hour the participant wrote as an answer the number was then multiplied by three, for the second question the number was multiplied by two and for the last question the number was multiplied by one, then all three new results were added together and the scoring system was completed.

With an average age for participants of 20, discussion With an R squared value of 0. 086 we can see that there was no significant correlation between the values of physical activity and self esteem for the participants from the University of Gloucestershire, it is possible that outliers may have affected the final R squared value (see appendix) but in all probability two main outliers would not be likely to have enough of an effect on the final result and make the difference up if removed of 0. 086 to 0. 05. One of the main limitations of the experiment was the number of participants even though there was an age range of 18, twice

the age of the youngest participant, with a larger number of completed questionnaires truer results would become apparent for the actual correlation between physical activity and self esteem, if there is any, for the students at the University of Gloucestershire. If this experiment was to be performed again in the future perhaps a few changes and/or amendments may need to be made, a different scoring system for physical activity would be the first difference as it is possible that the scoring system may have thrown the results out.

The standard deviation of Physical Activity was 25. 96381 whilst Self Esteem’s standard deviation was only 6. 6263 most likely showing that the physical activity scoring system has thrown the results of correlation testing out. The Likert scale for self esteem is a tried and tested scale and originally it was thought that it would work well with the new scale for measuring physical activity that was devised for this experiment however with an R squared value of greater than 0. 05 we can see that there is no significant correlation but if we look at basic statistics of the experiment a range of 109 in physical activity compared to 30 in self esteem may give a clue as to why the correlation was insignificant.

This could be combated by perhaps halving the physical activity score but that may become awkward with results that could come out as X. 5 so maybe simply doubling the self esteem score may change the significance of correlation.