Are There Relationships between Perceived and Actual Measures of Physical Fitness and Health for Healthy Young Women?

Abstract

The purposes were to assess the bivariate and multivariate relationships among the subdomains of physical self-concept, self-esteem, and objective measures of physical fitness in young healthy female graduate students. Nineteen participants were recruited from a local university and completed the Physical Self-Description Questionnaire-Short Form (PSDQ-S) to assess each individual's perceptions of her global physical self-concept, self-esteem, and physical fitness. Subsequently, a maximal aerobic capacity and muscular strength tests were completed, and moderate and significant correlations were found between these measures and the corresponding subdomains of the PSDQ-S. Multivariate analyses revealed that age and height but not the physical fitness tests were significant predictors of physical self-concept, while none of the variables predicted self-esteem.