Even a little goes a long way for health? Physical activity, obesity, health-related quality of life and depression

Phillips, Tania M. (2018) Even a little goes a long way for health? Physical activity, obesity, health-related quality of life and depression. Honours thesis, University of Southern Queensland. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

Overweight, obesity and physical inactivity (PI) are of major public health concern globally and associated with multiple adverse health outcomes. Overweight and obese populations experience diminished health-related quality of life (HRQOL) and greater depression symptoms when compared to their normal weight counterparts. Emerging evidence suggests ‘small changes’ in physical activity can produce positive health benefits. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of a little physical activity across body mass index (BMI) status on HRQOL and depression outcomes. Secondary data analysis was conducted using
the ‘US 2015 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System’ survey. A total of 4,442 participants with complete and valid responses were included in the analysis. A two-way
MANOVA was conducted with BMI (normal weight, overweight, obese) and physical activity (PI, insufficiently active [IA] < 150 min/week) as independent variables and HRQOL-4 and Patient Health Questionnaire-8 (PHQ-8; depression symptoms) as dependent variables. Statistically significant physical activity main effect revealed the IA groups
reported improvements in general health (‘very good’ versus ‘good’), roughly 6.5 days physical health and 3 days mental health, and PHQ-8 (‘none-to-minimal depression’ versus ‘mild depression’) compared to PI groups (p < .001). The overweight groups had larger improvements across dependent variables (except general health) compared to normal weight and obese groups. These findings add support to the growing small changes research, which suggests engaging in a little physical activity can improve health outcomes in overweight and obese populations.


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Item Type: Thesis (Non-Research) (Honours)
Item Status: Live Archive
Faculty/School / Institute/Centre: Historic - Faculty of Health, Engineering and Sciences - School of Psychology and Counselling (1 Jan 2015 - 31 Dec 2021)
Supervisors: Mullens, Amy; Tehan, Gerry
Qualification: Bachelor of Psychology (Honours)
Date Deposited: 26 Feb 2019 01:58
Last Modified: 27 Jun 2023 04:29
Uncontrolled Keywords: health-related quality of life, depression, physical activity, overweight, obesity
Fields of Research (2008): 11 Medical and Health Sciences > 1111 Nutrition and Dietetics > 111104 Public Nutrition Intervention
17 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 1701 Psychology > 170106 Health, Clinical and Counselling Psychology
Fields of Research (2020): 32 BIOMEDICAL AND CLINICAL SCIENCES > 3210 Nutrition and dietetics > 321005 Public health nutrition
52 PSYCHOLOGY > 5203 Clinical and health psychology > 520399 Clinical and health psychology not elsewhere classified
URI: https://sear.unisq.edu.au/id/eprint/36072

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