EAP 5 ASSIGNMENT COVER SHEET

Name: Nguyễn Thụy Bích Thảo................ I.D. B1111914244......

Class: EAP1119.5B
Assignment: (please circle) Res. Report Lit. Review Res. Essay

Assignment Question: (write out in full) Exercise habit – How can exercises
affect university student’s mental and physical health?
YouTube/ Google Drive link:
.....................................................................................................................................................
Due date: 13/12/2019. Date submitted: 13/12/2019

 I hold a copy of this assignment if the original is lost or damaged.

 I certify that no part of this assignment or product has been copied from any
other student’s work or from any other source except where due
acknowledgement is made in the assignment.
 I affirm that no part of this assignment/product has been written/produced for
me by any other person except where collaboration has been authorised by the
teacher concerned.
 I am aware that this work may be reproduced and submitted to plagiarism
detection software programs for the purpose of detecting possible plagiarism
(which may retain a copy on its database for future plagiarism checking).

Note: An examiner or teacher has the right to NOT mark this assignment
if the above declaration has not been signed.

Student’s Signature: ……..………Nguyễn Thụy Bích Thảo Date: 13/12/2019

EXTENSION – To be approved BEFORE original submission date

Supporting evidence sighted: Yes / No Extension approved / Extension not approved

If approved, new submission date ____/____/_____ Teacher’s Signature:___________________

1
 CONTENTS

1. Abstract .............................................................................................. 3

2. Introduction ........................................................................................ 4

3. Methodology ...................................................................................... 5

4. Results ............................................................................................... 6

5. Discussion ........................................................................................ 11

6. Reference list ................................................................................... 13

7. Appendix.......................................................................................... 14

2
 ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is indicating the influence of the exercise habit on university

students in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. It was expected that regular exercise have

essentially positive influences on mental health instead of on physical health. The research

was conducted on 100 samples by an online questionnaire about exercise habits and its effects.

The results show that respondents receive plenty of positive emotion and health during a

period of practicing (figure 2,3,4), and recognize the benefit of exercise although they do

exercise regularly (figure 5). Therefore, the finding is exact with the mentioned hypothesis but

more intensive researches should be continued to prove reliable the exercise’s impact on

university student’s spiritual health.

3
 INTRODUCTION

In recent years, people have tended to be more concerned about their health. An increasing

number of products called functional foods have attracted the attention and use of many

people in today's fast-paced life. However, supplements are quite expensive methods that not

everyone can meet, so people find basic measures to improve their health, and one of them is

doing exercises. Many kinds of research about exercise habits conducted on certain aspects

and provided basic information about exercise.

According to Biddle and Asare (2011), they conducted on children about their activities and

depression to indicate the relation between exercise and mental health. The result

demonstrated that doing routine physical exercises could decline stress, depressed mood and

improve memory. Following that, Warburton, Nicol, and Bredin (2006) claimed that they find

out the undeniable evidence that several chronic illnesses are prevented by regular exercise.

That is the reason why they believe that the more regularly you exercise, the better your health

will be.

However, there are some limitations in the previous studies. In the first research, they just

focus on the person who is in trouble with their emotion. The other research does not conduct

on the Vietnamese people. Therefore, although much work has been done to date, more

research needs to be done on university groups in Vietnam.

The objective of this research is about the impact of exercise habit. It is conducted on whether

exercise habits affect mental or physical health. It was hypothesized that regular exercise has

more positive impacts on mental than physical health.

4
 METHODOLOGY

On 27 November 2019, the research was carried out on 100 students from the university in

Vietnam, mainly in Ho Chi Minh city. The respondents were selected from the friend list of

members of the research team.

The instrument used to collect the data research was in the form of a questionnaire. The EAP5

students made 17 closed-end questions. It was divided into 2 main aspects: their thought about

exercises and the exercise’s impacts on a student’s life. The two first questions elicited

demographic information such as gender and age. The next two questions describe the general

thinking about exercises. In the following part, information was obtained on location, the kind

of exercise and the frequency of doing exercise. The last part talks about the influence of

exercise, which was divided into 2 categories: mental and physical health.

Next, 100 surveys were administered to university respondents by EAP 5 students in the

morning. It took respondents under 5 minutes to complete the questionnaire, so the whole

process needed at least 3 hours to be finished. The questions and answers, which were about

the influence of exercise habits on student’s lives, were collected online.

Finally, the data was converted into a percentage automatically by computer. Its information

was analyzed and collated through the figures that were presented in graphic form.

5
 RESULTS

Figure 1: The aim of doing exercise

The aim of doing exercise

13%

Stay health and keep fit

40%
Improve the appearance
22% Lose weight
Entertain

25%

The pie chart illustrates the purpose of participants when they do exercises.

In general, participants do exercise to improve their physical health more than their relaxing

and body image.

The main objective of doing exercise conducted is staying healthy and keeping fit. Reversely,

entertainment is the aspect that has the least concern, with just 13%, only a third compared to

the biggest concern.

In the second position of the graph is improving the appearance, which is followed by losing

weight. There is no difference between these purposes, respectively 22% and 25%.

6
Figure 2: The emotion when doing exercise

The emotion when doing exercise

60

50
The number of respondents

40

30

20

10

0
Interested Tired Bored Healthier
The emotion

The bar chart explains some kinds of emotion during doing exercise, including positive and

negative.

As it can be seen that feeling healthier is the main emotion chosen by account for nearly half

the number of respondents. Generally, most of the answerers have a positive thinking when

having physical activities, except only a person feels bored.

Following that is the tired sensation, which is an obvious thing when exercising. 29 people

said that they are feeling tired when having exercise, enclosed with that is interested passion

for this type of sport, which makes up 21 respondent’s selection.

7
Figure 3: The influence on physical health after the period of practice

The influence on physical health after the

period of practice

5%
18% 31% Muscular
Reduce a lot of weight
No change
Others

46%

Figure 3 indicates the percentage of exercise habit’s effects on physical health after the

training duration.

Generally, reducing weight is still the best influence of exercising on participant’s health,

which takes to nearly 50%.

Enclosed with that is 31% of respondents said that their body has more muscular after the

practicing time. Besides those impacts below 5% consider that regular exercising brings them

other benefits, including having more energy, being stronger and more flexible, etc.

However, 18% of the samples thought that it is nothing changes for themselves in physical

sides. Therefore, just nearly a fifth of respondents supposed that they do not receive any

influence of having exercise on their health.

8
Figure 4: The emotional changes after a period of exercise

The emotional changes after a period of

exercise
2%

28%
40% Happier
Normal
Clam
Frustrated

30%

The figure above demonstrates the percentage of people’s chances in the emotional aspect

after the exercising period.

In general, there is no huge difference between the statistics, expect only 2% of subjects said

that they become frustrated after the period of practice.

Feeling happier is the emotion that most of respondent feel after the practiced time, which take

to 40 %. Another better change in the answerer’s emotion when they exercise in a long time is

being calm. 68% is the total of the percentage of people who have good emotional changes,

which is doubled the percentage of respondents who have normal feelings without any

changes.

9
Figure 5: Doing exercise and its frequency

Doing exercise and its frequency

NO
The answer

4. Do you think exercise is good

for health?
do you regularly exercise every
week?
YES do you exercise?

0 20 40 60 80 100 120
The number of participants

The last pie chart shows the respondent’s answers to facts and opinions about exercise through

yes and no questions.

General speaking, the yes answers account for a large part, particularly nearly all people agree

when they were asked about if exercise is good for health.

However, it has a lighten decrease in the number of people who answer that they do exercise,

which is compared to the number of samples asserting the benefit of exercise. Surprisingly,

there is no difference between yes and no answer to the question about exercising regularly,

respectively 51 and 49 people. That means just a half of the number of respondents who

believe the good impact of exercise habit on their health actually does exercise regularly.

10
 DISCUSSION

The main goal of this study is to prove the effectiveness of exercise habit on human health in

both mental and physical sides. The theory of “human innovation” led us to infer that regular

exercise gives a more positive impact on mental health than physical health. As expectation,

the finding demonstrates that exercising effects more positively spirit health instead of

physical health.

According to Eichorn, Bruner, Short, Abraham (2018), they found that exercise habit brought

college students the positive influence on psychological health rather than physical health as

everyone’s advice, although the highest mean element is reputed as a health factor. Another

finding is that integrating studying and exercising during the day may enhance the productivity

of study time and thus improve students’ performance ( Fricke, Lechner, Steinmayr 2017).

The results above are completely similar to the findings in this research on Vietnamese

students. The first finding of this study is that every benefit of exercise is related to

psychological health, even if it makes physical changes. Lastly, the discovery of this research

is that university students nowadays lack exercise though they know the good impact of

regular exercise.

The first possible explanation for that finding is that exercise can help the student change their

emotion and even their personalities. Because when the youth exercise regularly in medium

and high intensity, they may learn to be calmer, more patient, relieving stress, and their spirit

could be refreshing by the release of energy. Moreover, the improvement of their appearance

such as reducing weight and being more muscular helps over 18 aged students to be happier

and confident in themselves. Therefore, exercise affects significantly the psychological

11
development. In addition, one thing explaining another finding is that university students do

not have enough time to do exercise regularly. In the modern and automated life, students

seem to be passive because of lack of space for activities, attracting by social media and

computer games, working part-time, having too much homework, etc. That may be a reason

why some respondents said that they do not receive any positive changes through exercise.

However, this study has several limitations, which make the result unclear and unreliable. The

significant limitations in this research were incomplete and unclear questionnaires and the

sample size. From this current information, students have positive thinking and become more

confident in themselves after doing exercise but it is not ensured that every university student

can receive the expected result, which leads to becoming depressed and disappointed about

themselves because of the limit in numbers of people to investigate. Additionally, the

questions about the exercise’s impact on psychological health are not enough to prove that it is

more than the benefit of physical health. Therefore, the research can be improved by

expanding the sample size and continuing the intensive research base on these results.

12
 REFERENCE LIST

Biddle, SJH, Asare, M 201, ‘Physical Activity and Mental Health in Children and
Adolescents’, viewed 5 December 2019
http://vuir.vu.edu.au/29912/1/Mental%20health%20review%20of%20reviews%20(BJSM%20
2011)%20(IR%2025-1-16).pdf

Warburton, DER, Nicol, CW & Bredin, SSD 2006, ‘Health benefits of physical activity: the
evidence’, CMAJ, viewed 5 December 2019
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1402378/

Eichorn, L, Bruner, K, Short, T & Abraham, SP 2018, ‘Factors That Affect Exercise Habits of
College Students’, Journal of Education and Development, vol.2, no.1, viewed 11 December
2019
http://journal.julypress.com/index.php/jed/article/view/327/256

Fricke, H, Lechner, M, Steinmayr, A 2017, ‘The Effect of Physical Activity on Student

Performance in College: An Experimental Evaluation’, CEPA Working Paper, Stanford
Center for Education Policy Analysis, no.17-03, viewed 11 December 2019
https://cepa.stanford.edu/content/effect-physical-activity-student-performance-college-
experimental-evaluation

13
 APPENDIX

How can exercise affect university student’s mental and physical life? EAP5

1. What is your gender?

 Male  Female

2. What is your age?

 18 and under  18 - 19

 20 - 21  22 and over

3. Do you exercise?

 Yes  No

 Others:_______________

4. Do you think exercise is good for health?

 Yes  No

5. What do you think are the purposes of exercise? (Can choose more than one options)

 Stay healthy & keep fit  Improve the appearance

 Lose weight  Entertain

 Others:___________________

6. In what ways do you think you would exercise?

 Swimming  Hiking

 Gym  Tennis

 Others:_________________

7. In your opinion, what do you think is the best place for exercise?

14
 Gym room  Park

 At home  Sport stadium

 Others:__________________

8. How much time do you think you would spend on exercising in a session?

 Less than 30 minutes  From 30 to 60 minutes

 From 60 to 75 minutes  More than 75 minutes

9. Do you regularly exercise every week?

 Yes  No

10. How often do you exercise per week?

 Once  Twice to three times

 Three to five times  More than five times

11. How do you feel when you exercise?

 Interested  Tired

 Bored  Healthier

12. Have you ever suffered from physical pain when you exercise?

 Yes  No

13. How do you feel about yourself after a period of practice?

 More muscular  Reduce a lot of weight

 No change  Others:__________________

14. How does exercise affect one's life?

 Positive  Negative

 Neutral
15
15. Does exercise bring benefits to your study?

 Yes  No

16. What are the benefits that exercise brings to your learning?

 Better concentration  Memory improvement

 Nothing  Others:__________________

17. How do you feel about your emotional changes after a period of practice?

 Happier  Normal

 Calm  Frustrated

 Others:_____________

16