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Physical activity and perceived stress among secondary school students in Nantong, China: cross-sectional indirect associations through resilience and life-event impact

This cross-sectional study of 1,200 secondary school students in Nantong, China, reveals that while physical activity is directly linked to lower perceived stress, its primary indirect protective effect operates through enhanced psychological resilience rather than the impact of stressful life events.

Original authors: Lidong Fang, HU LOU

Published 2026-09-09

📖 5 min read🧠 Deep dive

CC BY 4.0

Original authors: Lidong Fang, HU LOU

Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). ✨ This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer

Adolescence is a time of rapid change, where young people navigate a shifting landscape of biological growth, expanding independence, and complex social expectations. It is a period defined by both the formation of identity and the accumulation of pressure, from academic demands and family expectations to the uncertainty of the future. For many, these pressures manifest as perceived stress, a feeling that life's demands are overwhelming and beyond one's control. While we know that moving the body—engaging in physical activity—often correlates with better mental health, the specific mechanisms behind this relationship remain somewhat mysterious. Does exercise simply distract from problems, or does it fundamentally change how a young person handles them? To understand this, researchers look at concepts like resilience, which is the capacity to recover from difficulties, and the impact of specific stressful events, such as a bad grade or a family conflict. The central question is whether physical activity acts as a direct shield against stress, or if it works by strengthening the internal resources that help a person weather the storm.

In a large-scale survey conducted in Nantong, China, researchers set out to map these connections among 1,200 secondary school students. The study took place in April 2025 across two schools, one junior and one senior, gathering data through carefully designed questionnaires. The team measured four key things: how much the students moved their bodies, how resilient they felt, how much impact specific stressful life events had on them, and their overall level of perceived stress. By asking students to report on their exercise habits, their ability to bounce back, the weight of recent difficulties, and their general sense of being overwhelmed, the researchers could trace the statistical links between these factors. The goal was not to prove that exercise causes a specific outcome, but to see how these elements move together in a real-world snapshot of student life.

The results painted a clear picture of how these factors interact. First, the data confirmed that students who reported higher levels of physical activity also reported lower levels of perceived stress. However, the story was more nuanced than a simple cause-and-effect relationship. The strongest link found was between physical activity and psychological resilience. Students who exercised more tended to have higher scores on measures of resilience, suggesting that the act of moving the body is associated with a stronger capacity to cope with adversity. This resilience, in turn, was linked to two other outcomes: it was associated with a lower perceived impact from stressful life events and, independently, with lower overall stress levels. In other words, the students who were more active felt more capable, and those who felt more capable felt less overwhelmed by the challenges they faced.

Crucially, the study ruled out a different potential pathway. The researchers tested whether physical activity directly reduced the impact of stressful life events, such as a difficult exam or a family argument. The data showed no significant link here; being active did not appear to change the occurrence or the raw impact of these external events. Instead, the benefit of activity seemed to flow through the student's internal state. The most consistent explanation for why active students felt less stressed was their higher level of resilience. While there was a very small statistical path suggesting that activity might boost resilience, which then lowered the impact of life events, which finally lowered stress, this chain was fragile and less reliable than the direct link between activity and resilience. The study suggests that the primary value of physical activity in this context is its association with building the mental strength needed to handle life's pressures, rather than preventing the pressures themselves.

The context of these findings is important. More than half of the students surveyed fell into a low-activity category, with fewer than one in five classified as highly active. This distribution highlights a significant gap in current habits, as the majority of students reported activity levels below the moderate threshold. The researchers noted that while exercise cannot stop external events from happening, it may provide a space for young people to practice persistence, manage emotions, and recover from setbacks. These experiences, repeated over time, appear to strengthen the resources needed to face challenges. The study emphasizes that schools should not view physical activity as a magic cure that removes all stressors, but rather as a component of a broader approach that supports students' ability to cope. By maintaining regular physical education and providing supportive environments for movement, schools may help students build the resilience necessary to navigate the inevitable difficulties of adolescence.

Ultimately, this research offers a grounded perspective on the relationship between movement and mental well-being. It confirms that active students tend to feel less stressed, but it clarifies that this is largely because they also tend to be more resilient. The study does not claim that exercise eliminates the stressors of school or family life, nor does it suggest that a lack of resilience is solely the fault of inactivity. Instead, it points to resilience as the key bridge connecting physical activity to a calmer mind. Because the data was collected at a single point in time, the researchers cannot say for certain that exercise builds resilience over time, or that resilience leads to less stress in the future. However, the patterns observed are strong enough to suggest that fostering physical activity is a meaningful way to support the psychological health of young people, helping them develop the inner strength to face the world as it is.

Technical Summary: Physical Activity and Perceived Stress Among Secondary School Students in Nantong, China

Problem Statement
While physical activity is widely recognized as beneficial for adolescent mental health, the specific psychosocial mechanisms linking activity levels to perceived stress remain unclear. Adolescents face unique developmental stressors, including academic pressure and interpersonal demands, which can impair emotional regulation and social functioning. Although recent syntheses suggest resilience and self-efficacy as potential mediators, the specific interplay between physical activity, psychological resilience, the subjective impact of stressful life events, and perceived stress has not been fully elucidated in a Chinese secondary school context. This study addresses the gap by examining whether physical activity influences perceived stress directly or indirectly through resilience and the appraisal of life events.

Methodology

Design and Sample: A cross-sectional, school-based questionnaire survey was conducted in April 2025 in Nantong, Jiangsu Province. The final analytic sample consisted of 1,200 secondary school students (600 junior secondary, 600 senior secondary; 598 boys, 602 girls) drawn from two cooperating schools.
Measures:
- Physical Activity: Assessed via the Physical Activity Rating Scale-3 (PARS-3), calculating a composite score (intensity × duration × frequency) ranging from 0–100.
- Psychological Resilience: Measured using the 27-item Resilience Scale for Chinese Adolescents (RSCA).
- Stressful Life-Event Impact: Assessed with the 27-item Adolescent Self-Rating Life Events Checklist (ASLEC), focusing on the subjective impact of events rather than objective occurrence.
- Perceived Stress: Measured using the 14-item Chinese Perceived Stress Scale (CPSS).
Statistical Analysis: The authors employed Ordinary Least-Squares (OLS) regression to estimate a theory-guided serial indirect-effect model. Physical activity served as the independent variable ( $X$ $X$ ), resilience ( $M_1$ $M_{1}$ ) and life-event impact ( $M_2$ $M_{2}$ ) as mediators, and perceived stress as the outcome ( $Y$ $Y$ ).
- Three specific indirect pathways were tested: (1) Physical activity $\rightarrow$ Resilience $\rightarrow$ Stress; (2) Physical activity $\rightarrow$ Life-event impact $\rightarrow$ Stress; and (3) The serial pathway: Physical activity $\rightarrow$ Resilience $\rightarrow$ Life-event impact $\rightarrow$ Stress.
- Significance of indirect effects was determined using percentile bootstrapping with 10,000 resamples.
- Sensitivity analyses included HC3 heteroskedasticity-robust standard errors and the exclusion of extreme outliers (scores >3 IQRs from quartiles).

Key Results

Descriptive Statistics: The mean physical activity score was 22.57 (SD = 21.97), with 56.6% of students classified in the low-activity category. Mean perceived stress was 41.52 (SD = 4.91).
Bivariate Associations: Physical activity was positively correlated with resilience ( $r = 0.214, p < 0.001$ ) and negatively correlated with perceived stress ( $r = -0.124, p < 0.001$ ). However, physical activity showed no significant correlation with life-event impact ( $r = -0.015$ ). Resilience was negatively correlated with both life-event impact and perceived stress.
Regression and Indirect Effects:
- Total Association: Higher physical activity was associated with lower perceived stress ( $\beta = -0.124, p < 0.001$ ).
- Resilience Pathway: Physical activity significantly predicted higher resilience ( $\beta = 0.214$ ), which in turn predicted lower life-event impact ( $\beta = -0.145$ ) and lower perceived stress ( $\beta = -0.143$ ). The resilience-only indirect association was statistically detectable (Effect = -0.00686, 95% CI [-0.01095, -0.00348]).
- Life-Event Pathway: The direct path from physical activity to life-event impact was non-significant ( $p = 0.584$ ). Consequently, the life-event-only indirect pathway was not detectable (CI included zero).
- Serial Pathway: The serial indirect association (Physical activity $\rightarrow$ Resilience $\rightarrow$ Life-event impact $\rightarrow$ Stress) was negative and statistically detectable in the primary analysis but was small (Effect = -0.00082) and less robust in sensitivity analyses, becoming less stable when extreme scores were excluded.
- Direct Effect: Even after accounting for mediators, a significant direct negative association remained between physical activity and perceived stress ( $\beta = -0.092, p = 0.001$ ).

Significance and Claims
The paper concludes that psychological resilience is the most consistent explanatory correlate linking physical activity to reduced perceived stress in this sample. The findings support a model where physical activity is associated with greater resilience, which subsequently buffers against the perceived impact of life events and overall stress.

The authors explicitly state that the study does not provide evidence for a broad causal chain where physical activity directly reduces the occurrence or impact of external stressful life events. Instead, the data suggests that physical activity may foster internal resources (resilience) that alter how stressors are appraised or managed.

The authors emphasize several limitations and modest interpretations:

Causality: Due to the cross-sectional design, temporal order and causal mediation cannot be established. The indirect associations are exploratory.
Measurement: All variables were self-reported, introducing potential shared-method variance. The PARS-3 is a brief index rather than an objective measure of activity.
Generalizability: The sample was a convenience sample from two schools, not a citywide probability sample.
Practical Implication: The results suggest that school interventions should focus on combined approaches that protect physical education time and explicitly reinforce resilience-building strategies (e.g., effort, recovery, cooperation) rather than assuming exercise alone will remove structural stressors.

In summary, the study provides cross-sectional evidence that resilience is a primary mechanism through which physical activity relates to lower perceived stress among Chinese adolescents, while the role of life-event impact as a mediator appears limited and less robust.

Technical Summary: Physical Activity and Perceived Stress Among Secondary School Students in Nantong, China

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