BACKGROUND
Promoting students’ physical activity is a global public health challenge. Physical inactivity and sedentary behaviors have been regarded as causing harmful chronic diseases in young adults’ lifespan. However, high engagement in mobile technology for students may provide opportunities to help change unhealthy behaviors. Therefore, school sectors may play an important key role, such as implementing mobile health interventions to change students’ unhealthy behaviors and promoting regular physical activity, especially during the transition from adolescence to young adulthood.
OBJECTIVE
This study aimed to explore university students’ daily exercise patterns as a result of a school-based intervention using an mHealth app.
METHODS
Students’ physical exercise participation was recorded using a smart phone app. Involving 4,152 university freshmen (1,476 males, 2,676 females), 335,898 of their exercise records were analyzed (mean frequency of 38.2 ±16.10 for males, 45.1±10.81 for females) during the 2018-2019 semester.
RESULTS
Under the school-based intervention project, student exercise on Friday and Saturday was lower than that on other days, which indicated that participation in exercise was more active on weekdays than on weekends. Among the participants who completed the requirement set by the school intervention project, both males and females used weekends to do exercise. Overweight male university students participated in physical activity more than the school intervention project requirement, and their exercise duration was found to be significantly higher than that of other participants.
CONCLUSIONS
Understanding the weekly daily exercise patterns of youth as a result of the mHealth app intervention can benefit the development of efficient and flexible projects to promote young people’s physical health and improve their regular exercise participation.