A Systematic Review of the Impact of Physical Activity on Cognitive and Noncognitive Development in Chinese University Students

Hanying Zhang, Yuke Qin, Sabika Khalid, Endale Tadesse and Chunhai Gao ()
Additional contact information
Hanying Zhang: College of Sports and Arts, Guangzhou Sport University, Guangzhou 510500, China
Yuke Qin: School of Education, City University of Macau, Macao, China
Sabika Khalid: College of Teacher Education, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua 321004, China
Endale Tadesse: College of Teacher Education, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua 321004, China
Chunhai Gao: Faculty of Education, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, China

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 3, 1-11

Abstract: A large volume of empirical evidence and literature reviews on physical activity have concentrated on primary and secondary education. Thus, the primary aim of this systematic review is to synthesize empirical evidence regarding the potential impact of physical activity on academic and nonacademic performance among Chinese university students. A search and analysis of studies was conducted in accordance with the PRISMA guidelines by using an electronic database search (PubMed, Science Direct, and Scopus), and 150 studies were obtained. Subsequently, after producing rigorous inclusion and exclusion criteria, which were used to consider quality, methodology, language, geographical location, year of publication, etc., a total of 11 quantitative research articles, based on Chinese higher education institutions, were chosen for synthesis. The comprehensive analysis of the studies affirmed that physical activity dramatically benefits university students by fostering their nonacademic skills, such as social relatedness, life satisfaction, and mental health, in addition to boosting their academic achievement in terms of graduation, GPA, academic motivation, and engagement. However, the aim of this systematic review was to provide implications for future scholars to explicitly study university students’ educational level, discipline, sex, and type of physical activity.

Keywords: physical activity; academic; nonacademic performance; university students (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/3/2438/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/3/2438/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:3:p:2438-:d:1050944

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().