Longitudinal relationships between physical exercise, psychological resilience, and academic engagement in Chinese university students: a random-intercept cross-lagged panel study.

Authors

Yuankai Qiao, Haibin Liu

Published in

Frontiers in psychology. Volume 17. Pages 1989887. Epub Oct 13, 2026.

Abstract

The relationships among physical exercise, psychological resilience, and academic engagement have predominantly been examined using cross-sectional designs, which preclude inference about directionality. This study examined their longitudinal relationships in a two-wave panel of Chinese university students. Of 1,024 students who provided valid baseline data (October 2024), 876 (Mage = 20.34, SD = 1.67; 58.3% female) provided valid follow-up data 6 months later (April 2025) on exercise volume (PARS-3), psychological resilience (CD-RISC-10), and academic engagement (UWES-S). Cross-lagged panel models (CLPM) and random-intercept cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPM) were estimated in Mplus 8.8, with longitudinal measurement invariance established for all instruments. In the CLPM, exercise volume at T1 predicted resilience at T2 (beta = 0.17, p < 0.001) and resilience predicted engagement at T2 (beta = 0.14, p = 0.003), whereas the reverse paths and the direct exercise-to-engagement path were not significant. In the RI-CLPM, which separates between-person from within-person variance, the within-person association of exercise volume with subsequent resilience remained significant (beta = 0.11, p = 0.009) and was unaffected by assumptions about the reliability of the single-indicator exercise measure, whereas the within-person resilience-to-engagement path was attenuated (beta = 0.07, p = 0.074). Neither gender nor age moderated the relationships. Exercise volume is thus prospectively associated with subsequent resilience at the within-person level, whereas the resilience-engagement link appears to operate primarily between persons. Because the two-wave design and the single-indicator exercise measure require identifying constraints, the within-person decomposition is model-implied, and these findings are best interpreted as temporally ordered associations rather than confirmed within-person causal effects; exercise promotion stands as a candidate strategy for resilience support in university populations, pending experimental confirmation.

PMID:
42947776
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 28 Oct 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.