BACKGROUND
Promoting physical activity for adolescence is a global challenge in public health. Physical inactivity and sedentary behaviors have been regarded to cause harmful chronic diseases to adolescent lifespan. However, high engagement in mobile technology for students may provide opportunities to help change adolescent unhealthy behaviors. Therefore, school sectors may play an important key role, such as implementing mobile health (mHealth) intervention to change students’ unhealthy behaviors and promote regular physical exercise behaviors, especially during the transition from adolescence to young adult.
OBJECTIVE
This study aimed to explore university students’ daily exercise patterns upon intervention of school-based mHealth project.
METHODS
Students’ physical exercise participation was recorded with students’ mobile application. With 4152 university freshmen (1476 males, 2676 females) and 335898 of their exercise records were analyzed (mean frequency of 38.2 ±16.10 in males, 45.1±10.81 in females) during the semester.
RESULTS
Under the school intervention project, students that exercised on Friday and Saturday was lower than that on other days, which indicated that the participation in exercise were 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. On the other hand, overweight male university students participated in physical activity more than the requirement of the school intervention project and their exercise duration were found to be significantly higher than other participants.
CONCLUSIONS
Understanding a week of daily exercise patterns among youth upon the school mHealth Apps intervention can benefit in developing efficient and flexible projects to promote physical health and improve regular exercise participation in youth.