Impact of socioeconomic status on healthy sports behaviors among minority college students / 中国学校卫生

ABSTRACT

Objective@#To explore the impact of socioeconomic status on minority college students’ healthy sports behaviors, and to provide guidance for improving physical fitness among minority college students.@*Methods@#Binary Logistic regression and path analysis were used to analyze the path and effect of socioeconomic status on minority college students’ healthy sports behaviors, controlled for health status, academic pressure, sports attitude, sports venues, sports skills and health knowledge.@*Results@#Socioeconomic status was positively associated with students’ healthy sports behaviors (OR>1). With the potential variables controlled, the odds of participating in healthy sports activity among urban students, sophomores and female students was 2.10, 2.60 and 0.59 times higher than that of rural students, freshman and male students. Path analysis showed that the direct effect of socio-economic status on minority college students’ healthy sports behavior was 0.07, the indirect effect was 0.16, and the total effect was 0.23.@*Conclusion@#Socioeconomic status shows direct and indirect effect on healthy sports behaviors among college students, with the indirect effect being larger than direct effect. Apart from socioeconomic status, physical fitness education, as well as creating and maintaining a good physical exercise environment by schools and society should be encouraged to facilitate college students establishing healthy sports behaviors.