The Effect of Daily Physical Activity on the University Student’s Subjective Self-esteem

Sammanfattning: The following study examined the effects of physical activity against university students’ self-esteem levels in a medium sized city in Sweden. The paper was demarcated to investigate whether sport students differed from social program students on their level of self-esteem due to the amount of physical activity performed. We even took the variable of gender in account for examining the differences. The results showed that the group of sport students did in fact differ from the social program group on self-esteem, in terms of high and moderate physical activity, but not for low physical activity. The same outcome applied to the amount of physical activity performed only. When analyzing the gender differences, the results showed females in favor for having higher self-esteem levels than males across all three conditions of physical activity. Females also tended to perform high and moderate physical activity in a greater sense than males, while low activity had no significant difference. A conclusion was reached and we answered the research question that sport students did in fact have higher self-esteem levels and performed a higher amount of physical activity than social program students. However the differences was not noticeable large between the groups, which could be explained by other environmental and individual factors allowing this paper for further research within the topic and population of university students.