Effects of Fitness Dance and Funny Running on Anxiety of Female Ph.D. Candidates

Abstract

Anxiety has been widely prevalent among female Ph.D. candidates. There is a positive correlation between exercise and mental health promotion. Nevertheless, little is known about the use of fitness dance and funny running to intervene in the anxiety of female Ph.D. candidates. In this paper, the effects of fitness dance and funny running on the anxiety of female Ph.D. candidates were evaluated by a repeated measurement experimental design. We randomly divided the participants into two groups, one group received a fitness dance exercise, and the other received a funny running exercise. The Spielberger State–Trait Anxiety Inventory was used to investigate the female Ph.D. candidates’ anxiety. Repeated measures ANOVA was used to test the effects of a fitness dance group and a funny running group on participants’ anxiety, and to compare the differences between the two groups. Results showed that a 12-week fitness dance and funny running can alleviate participants’ anxiety from severe to moderate. Specifically, fitness dance increased the positive emotional experience of participants’ state anxiety (p = 0.018) and trait anxiety (p = 0.019) at 8-week, and decreased the negative emotional experience of state anxiety (p = 0.012), trait anxiety (p = 0.008), state anxiety level (p = 0.001) and trait anxiety level (p = 0.034) at 12-week. Funny running increased the positive emotional experience of participants’ state anxiety (p = 0.014), and trait anxiety (p = 0.002), and reduced the negative emotional experience of state anxiety (p = 0.043), state anxiety level (p = 0.047) and trait anxiety level (p = 0.022) at 12-week. This study suggests that fitness dance and funny running are healthy behaviors, which can help Chinese female Ph.D. candidates to dissociate from anxiety and stress situations and develop a healthy lifestyle. It is worth noting that the effects of fitness dance on Chinese female Ph.D. candidates’ anxiety are better than that of funny running. Based on the good effects of fitness dance in alleviating the anxiety of Chinese female Ph.D. candidates, future researches can design fitness dance intervention programs combining exercise therapy and psychotherapy according to the anxiety characteristics of female Ph.D. candidates, such as mindfulness fitness dance programs.