# The Influence of Occupational Therapy on College Students’ Home Physical Exercise Behavior and Mental Health Status under the Artificial Intelligence Technology

Authors: Chao SONG; G. E. Sha; Wanxiang Yao; Linhai YANG
Journal: Occupational Therapy International
 (2022)

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## Abstract

The core of occupational therapy is to help patients with mental illness recover their social work, give play to their self-worth, obtain financial resources, and improve their self-confidence. Occupational therapy can help patients relieve symptoms and restore social function, reduce disease recurrence, and improve the reemployment rate and the overall health level of patients. In order to deeply excavate the inner connection between the mental health status and physical exercise status of college students, the physical exercise behavior of college students during home isolation is studied. First, the “physical exercise behavior questionnaire” and “symptom self-assessment scale” were used to investigate the physical exercise behavior and mental health status of college students. Second, descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, independent samplet-test, and variance analysis were carried out on the survey results using mathematical statistics methods and big data technology. The survey results show high reliability, and the Cronbach’s α coefficients were all greater than 0.9. There was a positive correlation between physical exercise methods and mental health in general, and the difference in the degree of exercise is significantly different from the mental health of students (p<0.05). With the increase of exercise intensity, the score of “symptom self-assessment scale” first decreased and then increased, and the exercise intensity of medium and high intensity showed the best psychological state. And the correlation dimension of depression was the highest. This indicated that the students who liked family physical exercise were less likely to suffer from depression. In addition, depression was the most relevant dimension with self demand physical exercise, and interpersonal sensitivity was the most relevant dimension with social expansion physical exercise. The conclusion shows that the more active the students participate in family physical exercise, the healthier their mental state is. Occupational therapy has obvious curative effect on depression, which can improve patients’ negative symptoms, their living ability, and social function. Meanwhile, analyzing data through big data technology reduces human workload and improves data processing efficiency and accuracy. The scheme proposed here provides some ideas for the application of big data technology in occupational therapy.


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## Body

## 1. Introduction

As the main body of colleges, the college students group is not only the reserve force for the overall development of China’s modernization construction but also the hope of realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Hence, it is one of the crucial points of college education to cultivate students’ internal and external training [1] to make them develop healthy physical and mental quality. The state has also issued multiple policies to promote the overall physical and mental health development of college students [2], integrate all resources to support school sports and focus on mental health, and comprehensively improve the quality of physical education with the goal of “daily exercise, healthy growth and lifelong benefit” [3]. Moreover, the state focuses on the students’ mental and physical dynamics, improves the personality and quality of students, and provides qualified socialist builders and successors with healthy body and sound mind for the society [4]. China is in the critical period of rapid development of modernization. The increasingly fierce competition and the pressure of study and life require higher mental quality of college students [5]. The living conditions of contemporary college students are superior, and the internet big data era brings them more convenient conditions and broader space in life. These lead to their poor ability to adapt to society, extreme thinking, lack of self-control and so on, so their disease belief problems occur frequently [6]. However, the problem of students’ disease belief is the most difficult to find and solve, which also affects their growth and success [7]. The present level of college students’ disease belief is worrying. The pressure from school, employment, emotion, family, and other aspects makes some students appear depression, self-mutilation, and even more serious mental symptoms [8]. It not only limits the development of students themselves but also brings serious harm to students, schools, society, and families. It has become a top priority for colleges to strengthen the education of disease belief, optimize and improve the problem of college students’ disease belief, and improve the level of college students’ disease belief [9].The outbreak of COVID-19 has made students nationwide open the online learning mode. Thus, the scope of college students’ activities is smaller, they spend more time with their families, and their conflicts increase; the scope of social intercourse also shrinks [10]. In the long run, the problem of college students’ belief in disease has gradually become prominent [11]. Literature survey shows that college students’ disease belief is closely related to their physical health, and lifestyle exerts a great influence on college students’ disease belief [12]. Among them, physical exercise not only improves the physical quality of college students but also exerts a positive impact on their disease belief. Thereby, although college students have lost many opportunities for outdoor activities during the epidemic isolation [13], home exercise is a very effective way of sports activities, and it is a good means to promote college students’ health and regulate their disease belief state [14]. The mental state is an emotional state, which is affected by many factors. A good mental state can promote the healthy development of college students and have a positive impact on their life and work.Jacob et al. [15] studied 902 adults, of whom 63.8% were women and 50.1% were 35-64 years old. After adjusting the covariates, it was found that there was a negative correlation between moderate to severe physical activity per hour per day and poor mental health. Similar conclusions were drawn for moderate to severe anxiety, depression, and mental health problems [15]. Rogowska et al. [16] studied the relationship between physical activity and mental health of college students in Ukraine during the COVID-19 pandemic isolation. The study showed that compared with other groups, college students had a higher risk of mental health problems. Before the outbreak of COVID-19, more students participated in physical activity than during the national blockade. Students with anxiety and depression were almost twice as likely to participate in physical activity as peers without mental health disorders. The scores of anxiety and depression in inactive groups were higher than those in physical activity groups. The relationship between physical activity and anxiety and depression was statistically significant but weaker during the COVID-19 pandemic [16].Related literature analysis shows that the research on home exercise behavior is mostly confined to patients during the COVID-19 epidemic [17, 18]. Few scholars are concerned about the association between home exercise behavior and disease belief status of college students. Therefore, based on the previous studies on college students’ physical exercise behavior, the related research results of physical exercise behavior and psychology are taken as the theoretical basis. The positive effect of home physical exercise on disease belief is evaluated deeply through literature research and empirical investigation, so as to provide a research theory with reference significance for the cultivation and education of college students’ disease belief. The research innovation is to link college students’ home physical exercise behavior with their disease belief, which is bound to provide a new breakthrough for the development of college students’ disease belief.


## 2. Research on the Relationship between College Students’ Home Exercise Behavior and Disease Belief State

### 2.1. Research Objects and Literature Research Method

All college students in a university in Hangzhou are selected as research objects, and 270 college students are randomly selected from all students for the questionnaire survey, including freshmen to seniors from science and engineering, arts, and sports; besides, the proportion of male and female respondents is basically the same, which provides a scientific basis for the follow-up research.In CNKI, Wanfang, VIP and other Chinese journal databases, Google academic and other foreign language databases, digital library and other electronic resources, “physical exercise method,” “college students’ disease belief,” “COVID-19 period,” and “home physical exercise” are taken as the key words [19]. The relevant periodicals and dissertations related to the research contents are searched, retrieved, collected, and studied with “college students’ physical training methods” and “physical exercise methods and disease beliefs” as the title. Massive studies have been sorted out, and the basic knowledge has been studied, so as to understand and excavate the relevant research achievements and current situation in China and foreign countries. As the research focus, the relationship between college students’ home physical exercise mode and disease belief is summarized and analyzed, so as to lay a solid theoretical foundation for this exploration.


### 2.2. Questionnaire

The questionnaire includes three parts: the basic information of the respondents, the questionnaire of physical exercise methods, and the questionnaire of disease belief test. The basic information of the respondents includes gender, grade, subject, only child or not, origin of students, height, weight, and self-evaluation of health [20]. The problems related to the daily lifestyle and time arrangement of the respondents include average daily sleep time and how to spend free time during the epidemic period [21]; the problems related to the physical exercise behavior of the respondents include what are the common physical exercise behaviors during the epidemic period; the problems related to the frequency, duration, and intensity of the physical exercise behavior of the respondents include the number of times of physical exercise per week during the epidemic period, the duration of each physical exercise, the intensity of each physical exercise, and the evaluation of their own physical exercise behavior [22].At present, most of the studies on physical exercise methods are self-made questionnaires, which are not comprehensive in content, and the reliability and validity need to be verified. The questionnaire of college students’ physical exercise behavior at home is independently compiled with the previous research scale as the reference [23]. The scale includes two kinds of sports behavior motivation: “self-demand type” and “social expansion type,” which can be categorized into six dimensions: pleasure type, challenge type, health type, fitness type, learning type, and social type. Five grades from “completely consistent” to “completely not consistent” are set for each question [24], respectively, which are assigned as “1,” “2,” “3,” “4,” and “5” points. The lowest score of each dimension is 5 points, and the highest is 25 points. The lower the overall score is, the stronger the willingness to carry out sports is. The higher the overall score is, the lower the willingness to carry out sports is [25]. Regarding reliability, the internal consistency reliability and test-retest reliability test are used. The internal consistency reliability coefficient of the questionnaire is 0.895, and the test-retest reliability coefficient is 0.756, indicating high validity of the questionnaire; the questionnaire is evaluated and tested by experts of psychology and physical education, the validity of the contents in the questionnaire is good; the fitting degree of the model to the data is determined through confirmatory factor analysis, and the correctness of the theoretical model is tested [26].Symptom Checklist-90 (SCL-90) is employed in the disease belief scale. The validity of each symptom in the questionnaire is 0.85-0.99, which has good reliability and validity [27]. The scale is divided into somatization, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility, terror, paranoia, psychotic, and other ten dimensions. Each question has five levels of scoring criteria from “no” to “serious,” with “1,” “2,” “3,” “4,” and “5,” respectively. The lowest total score is 90, and the highest is 450. The lower score indicates the lighter symptoms and the better psychological condition [28].


### 2.3. Statistical Analysis

Mathematical statistics is to use the knowledge of statistics to analyze and study the data obtained to obtain the knowledge with regularity [29]. Excel 2019 is employed to make statistics of questionnaire data and perform tabulation, drawing, and so on; statistical software SPSS25.0 is adopted for descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, independent sample t-test, analysis of variance, and other statistical methods [30]. Overall, 270 questionnaires are distributed, 265 are recovered, and 260 invalid questionnaires are eliminated. The questionnaire recovery rate is 98.14%, and the effective recovery rate is 96.29%.Cronbach’sα is adopted to test the reliability and validity of the questionnaire of college students’ physical exercise at home, which is 0.925, indicating very high reliability. The validity of the questionnaire is tested by KMO (Kaiser Meyer Olkin) and Bartlett’s test. The KMO value is between 0.9 and 1, Bartlett’s test is significant (p<0.05), and the validity of the questionnaire is high.The reliability and validity of SCL-90 are tested by Cronbach’sα to test the reliability of physical exercise method questionnaire and disease belief self-evaluation questionnaire. The Cronbach’s α coefficients of the questionnaire are all greater than 0.9, suggesting high reliability of the questionnaire. KMO and Bartlett’s test are used to test the validity of physical exercise method questionnaire and disease belief self-evaluation questionnaire. The KMO values of both are between 0.9 and 1. The Bartlett’s test is significant (p<0.05), and the validity of the questionnaire is high. M represents the mean score, and SD represents the standard deviation.


## 2.1. Research Objects and Literature Research Method

All college students in a university in Hangzhou are selected as research objects, and 270 college students are randomly selected from all students for the questionnaire survey, including freshmen to seniors from science and engineering, arts, and sports; besides, the proportion of male and female respondents is basically the same, which provides a scientific basis for the follow-up research.In CNKI, Wanfang, VIP and other Chinese journal databases, Google academic and other foreign language databases, digital library and other electronic resources, “physical exercise method,” “college students’ disease belief,” “COVID-19 period,” and “home physical exercise” are taken as the key words [19]. The relevant periodicals and dissertations related to the research contents are searched, retrieved, collected, and studied with “college students’ physical training methods” and “physical exercise methods and disease beliefs” as the title. Massive studies have been sorted out, and the basic knowledge has been studied, so as to understand and excavate the relevant research achievements and current situation in China and foreign countries. As the research focus, the relationship between college students’ home physical exercise mode and disease belief is summarized and analyzed, so as to lay a solid theoretical foundation for this exploration.


## 2.2. Questionnaire

The questionnaire includes three parts: the basic information of the respondents, the questionnaire of physical exercise methods, and the questionnaire of disease belief test. The basic information of the respondents includes gender, grade, subject, only child or not, origin of students, height, weight, and self-evaluation of health [20]. The problems related to the daily lifestyle and time arrangement of the respondents include average daily sleep time and how to spend free time during the epidemic period [21]; the problems related to the physical exercise behavior of the respondents include what are the common physical exercise behaviors during the epidemic period; the problems related to the frequency, duration, and intensity of the physical exercise behavior of the respondents include the number of times of physical exercise per week during the epidemic period, the duration of each physical exercise, the intensity of each physical exercise, and the evaluation of their own physical exercise behavior [22].At present, most of the studies on physical exercise methods are self-made questionnaires, which are not comprehensive in content, and the reliability and validity need to be verified. The questionnaire of college students’ physical exercise behavior at home is independently compiled with the previous research scale as the reference [23]. The scale includes two kinds of sports behavior motivation: “self-demand type” and “social expansion type,” which can be categorized into six dimensions: pleasure type, challenge type, health type, fitness type, learning type, and social type. Five grades from “completely consistent” to “completely not consistent” are set for each question [24], respectively, which are assigned as “1,” “2,” “3,” “4,” and “5” points. The lowest score of each dimension is 5 points, and the highest is 25 points. The lower the overall score is, the stronger the willingness to carry out sports is. The higher the overall score is, the lower the willingness to carry out sports is [25]. Regarding reliability, the internal consistency reliability and test-retest reliability test are used. The internal consistency reliability coefficient of the questionnaire is 0.895, and the test-retest reliability coefficient is 0.756, indicating high validity of the questionnaire; the questionnaire is evaluated and tested by experts of psychology and physical education, the validity of the contents in the questionnaire is good; the fitting degree of the model to the data is determined through confirmatory factor analysis, and the correctness of the theoretical model is tested [26].Symptom Checklist-90 (SCL-90) is employed in the disease belief scale. The validity of each symptom in the questionnaire is 0.85-0.99, which has good reliability and validity [27]. The scale is divided into somatization, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility, terror, paranoia, psychotic, and other ten dimensions. Each question has five levels of scoring criteria from “no” to “serious,” with “1,” “2,” “3,” “4,” and “5,” respectively. The lowest total score is 90, and the highest is 450. The lower score indicates the lighter symptoms and the better psychological condition [28].


## 2.3. Statistical Analysis

Mathematical statistics is to use the knowledge of statistics to analyze and study the data obtained to obtain the knowledge with regularity [29]. Excel 2019 is employed to make statistics of questionnaire data and perform tabulation, drawing, and so on; statistical software SPSS25.0 is adopted for descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, independent sample t-test, analysis of variance, and other statistical methods [30]. Overall, 270 questionnaires are distributed, 265 are recovered, and 260 invalid questionnaires are eliminated. The questionnaire recovery rate is 98.14%, and the effective recovery rate is 96.29%.Cronbach’sα is adopted to test the reliability and validity of the questionnaire of college students’ physical exercise at home, which is 0.925, indicating very high reliability. The validity of the questionnaire is tested by KMO (Kaiser Meyer Olkin) and Bartlett’s test. The KMO value is between 0.9 and 1, Bartlett’s test is significant (p<0.05), and the validity of the questionnaire is high.The reliability and validity of SCL-90 are tested by Cronbach’sα to test the reliability of physical exercise method questionnaire and disease belief self-evaluation questionnaire. The Cronbach’s α coefficients of the questionnaire are all greater than 0.9, suggesting high reliability of the questionnaire. KMO and Bartlett’s test are used to test the validity of physical exercise method questionnaire and disease belief self-evaluation questionnaire. The KMO values of both are between 0.9 and 1. The Bartlett’s test is significant (p<0.05), and the validity of the questionnaire is high. M represents the mean score, and SD represents the standard deviation.


## 3. Research on the Relationship between College Students’ Home Exercise Behavior and Disease Belief State

### 3.1. Analysis of the Current Situation of College Students’ Home Exercise

Table1 is a descriptive analysis of the subjects.Table 1
Basic information description chart of respondents.
ProjectPercentageGenderMale0.547Female0.453GradeFreshman0.373Sophomore0.206Junior0.186Senior year0.235Only child or notYes0.625No0.375Student place attributeCity0.390Rural area0.610Discipline classificationScience0.410Engineering0.284Liberal arts0.202Arts and sports0.104Table1 presents the basic information of the subject of this investigation. The results show that the proportion of male students is about 55%, and that of girls is about 45%, suggesting a basically balanced gender proportion; regarding grades, the number of freshmen is the most, accounting for about 37% of the total number. The number of senior students in the other three grades is the most, accounting for about 24% of the total number; regarding the category of subjects, the subjects surveyed are the most students in science and engineering, accounting for about 70% of the total number; regarding the type of student source, the number of students in rural household registration is large; besides, the number of students who are only child is far higher than that of non only child.Figure1 shows the type of physical exercise and gender differences.Figure 1
Physical exercise motivation and gender differences ((a) physical exercise type differences; (b) gender differences).
(a)(b)The difference of the types of physical exercise motivation reveals that the highest type of physical exercise motivation is the healthy type, accounting for about 37% of the total number of students, followed by pleasant type, accounting for about 22%. Others are fitness type (about 17%), social type (12%), and challenge type (about 6%). Among them, the healthy type and the pleasant type account for more than half of the total, indicating that the purpose of college students’ physical exercise is to enhance their health. In the type of physical exercise, the survey results of different gender differences show that the average score of learning type male and female is almost the same, and the others are quite different. It means that the motivation of males is higher than that of females.Figure2 shows the difference of physical exercise among different grades and whether they are only children or not.Figure 2
The result chart of the difference of motivation of physical exercise among different grades and students who are only child or not ((a) differences among students from different grades; (b) differences among students who are only child or not.
(a)(b)The difference of physical exercise motivation among different grades shows that there are significant differences in the type of challenge motivation among students of different grades, while there are no significant differences in other types of motivation. In the same type of motivation, the motivation of different grades of students to participate in physical exercise is also different. Among the students with challenge motivation, senior students have stronger motivation than other students. Among all kinds of physical exercise motivation, freshmen and juniors have less motivation. The survey results of physical exercise motivation among students who are only child or not only child reveal that the motivation of only child is stronger than that of non only child, and there are significant differences among the four motivations of challenge, health, learning, and sociality. Thus, the motivation of only child is higher than that of non only child.Figure3 displays the results of the self-evaluation of physical exercise motivation differences under different physical conditions and college students’ physical exercise choices.Figure 3
The results of self-evaluation of physical exercise motivation in different self-conditions and project selection ((a) self-evaluation of different self-conditions; (b) project selection).
(a)(b)The results suggest that the students with poor self-evaluation condition have strong motivation for physical exercise, and the motivation types are “healthy type, challenge type and bodybuilding type.” In the healthy type, the students with the lowest score are the ones with “very poor” self-evaluation conditions, indicating that this kind of students strongly need more healthy physical exercise, which is also in line with the reality of life. In the result chart of students’ selection of physical exercise items, affected by the isolation during the epidemic, most students can only choose independent exercise methods. Their favorite exercise methods are walking and jogging, which account for the majority.Figure4 is the statistical results of the survey on the frequency, duration, and intensity of college students’ home exercise.Figure 4
Results of frequency, duration, and intensity of home exercise ((a) weekly frequency; (b) duration; (c) strength level).
(a)(b)(c)Figure4 illustrates that regarding exercise frequency, students who exercise twice a week account for 32% of the total number, followed by students who exercise three times a week, accounting for 27% of the total number. Regarding duration, the number of students who exercise for 15-30 minutes each time is the largest, accounting for about 40% of the total number, followed by the number of students who exercise for 30-45 minutes each time, accounting for 22.5% of the total number; regarding exercise intensity, the number of students with medium exercise intensity is the largest, accounting for about 33% of the total number, followed by students with medium to high exercise intensity, accounting for about 30% of the total number.Through one-way analysis of variance, it is found that there is a significant difference between the degree of exercise and students’ mental health (p<0.05). With the continuous enhancement of students’ exercise intensity, the scores of the “symptom self-Assessment scale” shows a trend of first decreasing and then increasing. Students with moderate to high exercise intensity show the best psychological state.


### 3.2. Analysis on the Status Quo of College Students’ Belief in Disease

Figure5 shows the overall situation of SCL-90 and gender difference.Figure 5
Overall survey results of the self-evaluation form and gender differences ((a) general situation; (b) gender differences).
(a)(b)The results indicate that the overall score of disease belief of the subjects is 121, which is far lower than the national norm. Besides, the score of each dimension is less than 1.5, indicating that the respondents have a high level of disease belief. However, it cannot be ignored that nearly 13% of the students’ total score exceeds the critical value of 160, about 22% of the students have obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and a few students have other disease belief problems. The results of the gender difference survey show that there is a big difference between males and females. The analysis oft-test results reveals that there are significant differences between males and females in obsessive-compulsive symptoms and terror (p<0.05). On the whole, males’ disease belief state in the self-evaluation of disease belief is more healthy than that of females, and there are more students in the female group with obsessive-compulsive, interpersonal sensitivity, and terror phenomenon.Figure6 is an analysis of the results of the survey on the differences between grades and places of origin of the students.Figure 6
Results of the survey on the differences between grades and places of origin ((a) grade differences; (b) differences of students’ origins).
(a)(b)The results of self-evaluation table show that the scores of the students in the junior are the highest in all dimensions, and the rest scores are ranked as freshman, sophomore, and senior. Meanwhile, the number of students with disease belief problems is the most in freshman, and the number of students in senior grade has the least problem. Specifically, according to the severity of depression and anxiety, scores of junior are the highest, followed by the freshman, sophomore, and senior four. In the results of the difference in scores of the students’ self-evaluation form, the scores of college students from rural areas are lower than those from cities regarding somatization and sleep diet, and other dimensions are higher than those from cities. Therefore, the disease belief problems of college students from rural areas are more serious than those from the city.Figure7 is an analysis of the difference between the only child and non only child and their own self-evaluation table.Figure 7
The result chart of the difference between the only child or not and self-evaluation scale on self-condition ((a) whether the only child or not; (b) self-condition difference).
(a)(b)The results suggest that the only child’s disease belief scores in compulsion, anxiety, hostility, terror, and interpersonal sensitivity are lower than those of the non only child. In the self-evaluation of physical condition, the score of poor self-evaluation of physical condition is close to the total score of 200, and the score of each dimension is more than 2. The better the self-evaluation of physical condition is, the lower the score is. Besides, most of the students with poor self-evaluation have some problems in disease belief. It reveals that when students enhance physical exercise and improve their physical quality, psychological quality will also be enhanced.Figure8 shows the analysis of severe mental symptoms.Figure 8
Analysis of severe mental symptoms.Somatization, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, interpersonal relationship, depression, anxiety, hostility, terror, paranoia, and psychotic are more than 36, 30, 27, 39, 30, 18, 21, 18, and 30 points, respectively, which are more serious symptoms. Somatization and terror are the two symptoms with a low probability of serious illness belief problems among the investigated college students, and the proportion is below 1%, followed by psychotic, anxiety, hostility, paranoia, and interpersonal relationship, which are about 2%, while depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder are more than 3% with high probability.


### 3.3. Analysis of the Correlation between College Students’ Home Exercise and Disease Belief

Figure9 is the relevance of the exercise frequency and duration to disease belief.Figure 9
Results of investigation on the relevance of exercise frequency and duration to disease belief ((a) exercise frequency; (b) exercise duration).
(a)(b)The results show that the score of exercise frequency is 0-1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 times from high to low. Hence, the belief level of disease will be improved every time college students improve their weekly exercise frequency. The results of the survey of exercise duration show that the scores of exercise duration are <15 min, 15-30 min, 30-45 min, 45-50 min, and >60 min from high to low. Therefore, the belief level of disease will be improved every time college students improve their exercise duration. Generally, improving the frequency and duration of physical exercise is conducive to the development of disease beliefs of college students.Figure10 presents the relevance of different exercise intensities and modes to disease belief.Figure 10
Results of investigation on the relevance of different exercise intensities and modes to disease belief ((a) exercise intensity; (b) exercise mode).
(a)(b)The survey results suggest that the scores of different exercise intensity from high to low are low intensity, medium and low intensity, high intensity, medium intensity, and medium and high intensity. Hence, enhancing college students’ physical exercise intensity will benefit their disease beliefs. The survey results of different physical exercise methods show that the college students with healthy and pleasant physical exercise methods have the least problem of disease belief, accounting for about 10%, followed by social type, fitness type, challenge type, and learning type, accounting for 18.5%, 25.6%, 32.9%, and 30.5%, respectively. Thereby, when college students take part in physical exercise, they are not recommended to participate in too many sports events. The general healthy, pleasant, and social physical exercise is more conducive to the development of college students’ disease belief.Figure11 is the correlation analysis of the results of self-evaluation of physical exercise and disease belief.Figure 11
Correlation analysis chart between physical exercise methods and self-evaluation results of disease belief (∗ indicates p<0.05, and ∗∗ means p<0.01).Figure11 shows that the two dimensions of somatization and depression have the highest positive correlation among the healthy physical exercise methods. In other words, the lower the motivation score of the healthy physical exercise method is, the more physical problems will appear, such as stomachache, physical discomfort, chest tightness, and headache, resulting in more depression, like the lower interest in life, the lack of motivation for activities, and often depressed. There is the highest positive correlation between bodybuilding physical exercise method and paranoid dimension. In other words, the higher the score of bodybuilding physical exercise method is, the higher the score of paranoia is. It shows that if the motivation to participate in bodybuilding physical exercise is very low, the psychological needs of bodybuilding is very small. What is more, it can avoid the motivation of bodybuilding physical exercise. In this way, the degree of suspicion, hostility, and paranoia in the mind will be greater. Among the challenging physical exercise methods, the positive correlation between anxiety and psychotic is the highest. In other words, the higher the score of challenging physical exercise method is, the higher the score of anxiety and psychotic is. Then, the college students who often participate in the competition have better health performance in anxiety and psychotic than those who do not often participate in the competition. Among the methods of pleasant physical exercise, the two dimensions with the highest positive correlation are obsessive-compulsive symptoms and depression. That is, the higher the score of pleasant physical exercise is, the higher the score of obsessive-compulsive symptoms and depression is, which means that the weaker the students’ motivation for pleasant physical exercise is, the easier such students are to produce meaningless thoughts and impulsive behavior, and the higher the probability of depression is.Generally, physical exercise methods are positively correlated with disease belief. The intensity of physical exercise has a huge impact on the mental health of college students. With the increase of the intensity of physical exercise, the score corresponding to the symptom self-assessment scale shows a trend of first decreasing and then increasing. Meanwhile, when the intensity of physical exercise reaches medium to high intensity, college students show the best psychological state, and depression is the highest correlation dimension, which means that students who prefer home physical exercise are less likely to have depression. Moreover, depression is the most relevant dimension to the self-demand physical exercise method, and interpersonal relationship sensitivity is the most relevant dimension to the social expansion physical exercise method.


## 3.1. Analysis of the Current Situation of College Students’ Home Exercise

Table1 is a descriptive analysis of the subjects.Table 1
Basic information description chart of respondents.
ProjectPercentageGenderMale0.547Female0.453GradeFreshman0.373Sophomore0.206Junior0.186Senior year0.235Only child or notYes0.625No0.375Student place attributeCity0.390Rural area0.610Discipline classificationScience0.410Engineering0.284Liberal arts0.202Arts and sports0.104Table1 presents the basic information of the subject of this investigation. The results show that the proportion of male students is about 55%, and that of girls is about 45%, suggesting a basically balanced gender proportion; regarding grades, the number of freshmen is the most, accounting for about 37% of the total number. The number of senior students in the other three grades is the most, accounting for about 24% of the total number; regarding the category of subjects, the subjects surveyed are the most students in science and engineering, accounting for about 70% of the total number; regarding the type of student source, the number of students in rural household registration is large; besides, the number of students who are only child is far higher than that of non only child.Figure1 shows the type of physical exercise and gender differences.Figure 1
Physical exercise motivation and gender differences ((a) physical exercise type differences; (b) gender differences).
(a)(b)The difference of the types of physical exercise motivation reveals that the highest type of physical exercise motivation is the healthy type, accounting for about 37% of the total number of students, followed by pleasant type, accounting for about 22%. Others are fitness type (about 17%), social type (12%), and challenge type (about 6%). Among them, the healthy type and the pleasant type account for more than half of the total, indicating that the purpose of college students’ physical exercise is to enhance their health. In the type of physical exercise, the survey results of different gender differences show that the average score of learning type male and female is almost the same, and the others are quite different. It means that the motivation of males is higher than that of females.Figure2 shows the difference of physical exercise among different grades and whether they are only children or not.Figure 2
The result chart of the difference of motivation of physical exercise among different grades and students who are only child or not ((a) differences among students from different grades; (b) differences among students who are only child or not.
(a)(b)The difference of physical exercise motivation among different grades shows that there are significant differences in the type of challenge motivation among students of different grades, while there are no significant differences in other types of motivation. In the same type of motivation, the motivation of different grades of students to participate in physical exercise is also different. Among the students with challenge motivation, senior students have stronger motivation than other students. Among all kinds of physical exercise motivation, freshmen and juniors have less motivation. The survey results of physical exercise motivation among students who are only child or not only child reveal that the motivation of only child is stronger than that of non only child, and there are significant differences among the four motivations of challenge, health, learning, and sociality. Thus, the motivation of only child is higher than that of non only child.Figure3 displays the results of the self-evaluation of physical exercise motivation differences under different physical conditions and college students’ physical exercise choices.Figure 3
The results of self-evaluation of physical exercise motivation in different self-conditions and project selection ((a) self-evaluation of different self-conditions; (b) project selection).
(a)(b)The results suggest that the students with poor self-evaluation condition have strong motivation for physical exercise, and the motivation types are “healthy type, challenge type and bodybuilding type.” In the healthy type, the students with the lowest score are the ones with “very poor” self-evaluation conditions, indicating that this kind of students strongly need more healthy physical exercise, which is also in line with the reality of life. In the result chart of students’ selection of physical exercise items, affected by the isolation during the epidemic, most students can only choose independent exercise methods. Their favorite exercise methods are walking and jogging, which account for the majority.Figure4 is the statistical results of the survey on the frequency, duration, and intensity of college students’ home exercise.Figure 4
Results of frequency, duration, and intensity of home exercise ((a) weekly frequency; (b) duration; (c) strength level).
(a)(b)(c)Figure4 illustrates that regarding exercise frequency, students who exercise twice a week account for 32% of the total number, followed by students who exercise three times a week, accounting for 27% of the total number. Regarding duration, the number of students who exercise for 15-30 minutes each time is the largest, accounting for about 40% of the total number, followed by the number of students who exercise for 30-45 minutes each time, accounting for 22.5% of the total number; regarding exercise intensity, the number of students with medium exercise intensity is the largest, accounting for about 33% of the total number, followed by students with medium to high exercise intensity, accounting for about 30% of the total number.Through one-way analysis of variance, it is found that there is a significant difference between the degree of exercise and students’ mental health (p<0.05). With the continuous enhancement of students’ exercise intensity, the scores of the “symptom self-Assessment scale” shows a trend of first decreasing and then increasing. Students with moderate to high exercise intensity show the best psychological state.


## 3.2. Analysis on the Status Quo of College Students’ Belief in Disease

Figure5 shows the overall situation of SCL-90 and gender difference.Figure 5
Overall survey results of the self-evaluation form and gender differences ((a) general situation; (b) gender differences).
(a)(b)The results indicate that the overall score of disease belief of the subjects is 121, which is far lower than the national norm. Besides, the score of each dimension is less than 1.5, indicating that the respondents have a high level of disease belief. However, it cannot be ignored that nearly 13% of the students’ total score exceeds the critical value of 160, about 22% of the students have obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and a few students have other disease belief problems. The results of the gender difference survey show that there is a big difference between males and females. The analysis oft-test results reveals that there are significant differences between males and females in obsessive-compulsive symptoms and terror (p<0.05). On the whole, males’ disease belief state in the self-evaluation of disease belief is more healthy than that of females, and there are more students in the female group with obsessive-compulsive, interpersonal sensitivity, and terror phenomenon.Figure6 is an analysis of the results of the survey on the differences between grades and places of origin of the students.Figure 6
Results of the survey on the differences between grades and places of origin ((a) grade differences; (b) differences of students’ origins).
(a)(b)The results of self-evaluation table show that the scores of the students in the junior are the highest in all dimensions, and the rest scores are ranked as freshman, sophomore, and senior. Meanwhile, the number of students with disease belief problems is the most in freshman, and the number of students in senior grade has the least problem. Specifically, according to the severity of depression and anxiety, scores of junior are the highest, followed by the freshman, sophomore, and senior four. In the results of the difference in scores of the students’ self-evaluation form, the scores of college students from rural areas are lower than those from cities regarding somatization and sleep diet, and other dimensions are higher than those from cities. Therefore, the disease belief problems of college students from rural areas are more serious than those from the city.Figure7 is an analysis of the difference between the only child and non only child and their own self-evaluation table.Figure 7
The result chart of the difference between the only child or not and self-evaluation scale on self-condition ((a) whether the only child or not; (b) self-condition difference).
(a)(b)The results suggest that the only child’s disease belief scores in compulsion, anxiety, hostility, terror, and interpersonal sensitivity are lower than those of the non only child. In the self-evaluation of physical condition, the score of poor self-evaluation of physical condition is close to the total score of 200, and the score of each dimension is more than 2. The better the self-evaluation of physical condition is, the lower the score is. Besides, most of the students with poor self-evaluation have some problems in disease belief. It reveals that when students enhance physical exercise and improve their physical quality, psychological quality will also be enhanced.Figure8 shows the analysis of severe mental symptoms.Figure 8
Analysis of severe mental symptoms.Somatization, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, interpersonal relationship, depression, anxiety, hostility, terror, paranoia, and psychotic are more than 36, 30, 27, 39, 30, 18, 21, 18, and 30 points, respectively, which are more serious symptoms. Somatization and terror are the two symptoms with a low probability of serious illness belief problems among the investigated college students, and the proportion is below 1%, followed by psychotic, anxiety, hostility, paranoia, and interpersonal relationship, which are about 2%, while depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder are more than 3% with high probability.


## 3.3. Analysis of the Correlation between College Students’ Home Exercise and Disease Belief

Figure9 is the relevance of the exercise frequency and duration to disease belief.Figure 9
Results of investigation on the relevance of exercise frequency and duration to disease belief ((a) exercise frequency; (b) exercise duration).
(a)(b)The results show that the score of exercise frequency is 0-1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 times from high to low. Hence, the belief level of disease will be improved every time college students improve their weekly exercise frequency. The results of the survey of exercise duration show that the scores of exercise duration are <15 min, 15-30 min, 30-45 min, 45-50 min, and >60 min from high to low. Therefore, the belief level of disease will be improved every time college students improve their exercise duration. Generally, improving the frequency and duration of physical exercise is conducive to the development of disease beliefs of college students.Figure10 presents the relevance of different exercise intensities and modes to disease belief.Figure 10
Results of investigation on the relevance of different exercise intensities and modes to disease belief ((a) exercise intensity; (b) exercise mode).
(a)(b)The survey results suggest that the scores of different exercise intensity from high to low are low intensity, medium and low intensity, high intensity, medium intensity, and medium and high intensity. Hence, enhancing college students’ physical exercise intensity will benefit their disease beliefs. The survey results of different physical exercise methods show that the college students with healthy and pleasant physical exercise methods have the least problem of disease belief, accounting for about 10%, followed by social type, fitness type, challenge type, and learning type, accounting for 18.5%, 25.6%, 32.9%, and 30.5%, respectively. Thereby, when college students take part in physical exercise, they are not recommended to participate in too many sports events. The general healthy, pleasant, and social physical exercise is more conducive to the development of college students’ disease belief.Figure11 is the correlation analysis of the results of self-evaluation of physical exercise and disease belief.Figure 11
Correlation analysis chart between physical exercise methods and self-evaluation results of disease belief (∗ indicates p<0.05, and ∗∗ means p<0.01).Figure11 shows that the two dimensions of somatization and depression have the highest positive correlation among the healthy physical exercise methods. In other words, the lower the motivation score of the healthy physical exercise method is, the more physical problems will appear, such as stomachache, physical discomfort, chest tightness, and headache, resulting in more depression, like the lower interest in life, the lack of motivation for activities, and often depressed. There is the highest positive correlation between bodybuilding physical exercise method and paranoid dimension. In other words, the higher the score of bodybuilding physical exercise method is, the higher the score of paranoia is. It shows that if the motivation to participate in bodybuilding physical exercise is very low, the psychological needs of bodybuilding is very small. What is more, it can avoid the motivation of bodybuilding physical exercise. In this way, the degree of suspicion, hostility, and paranoia in the mind will be greater. Among the challenging physical exercise methods, the positive correlation between anxiety and psychotic is the highest. In other words, the higher the score of challenging physical exercise method is, the higher the score of anxiety and psychotic is. Then, the college students who often participate in the competition have better health performance in anxiety and psychotic than those who do not often participate in the competition. Among the methods of pleasant physical exercise, the two dimensions with the highest positive correlation are obsessive-compulsive symptoms and depression. That is, the higher the score of pleasant physical exercise is, the higher the score of obsessive-compulsive symptoms and depression is, which means that the weaker the students’ motivation for pleasant physical exercise is, the easier such students are to produce meaningless thoughts and impulsive behavior, and the higher the probability of depression is.Generally, physical exercise methods are positively correlated with disease belief. The intensity of physical exercise has a huge impact on the mental health of college students. With the increase of the intensity of physical exercise, the score corresponding to the symptom self-assessment scale shows a trend of first decreasing and then increasing. Meanwhile, when the intensity of physical exercise reaches medium to high intensity, college students show the best psychological state, and depression is the highest correlation dimension, which means that students who prefer home physical exercise are less likely to have depression. Moreover, depression is the most relevant dimension to the self-demand physical exercise method, and interpersonal relationship sensitivity is the most relevant dimension to the social expansion physical exercise method.


## 4. Conclusion

With the full-scale outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020, the country took timely preventive measures and implemented isolation measures at once, and people across the country began a long-term home isolation. Under the background of the outbreak of, the current situation of college students’ home physical exercise behavior is investigated to study its internal relationship with the disease belief state of college students. Meanwhile, the disease belief state of college students at home during the COVID-19 epidemic is investigated. Among them, the questionnaire of physical exercise behavior is used in the investigation of college students’ physical exercise behavior, and the SCL-90 is employed in the investigation of college students’ disease beliefs. Then, descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, independent samplet-test, and variance analysis of the survey results are performed through the mathematical statistics. The Cronbach’s α coefficients are greater than 0.9, so the questionnaires have high credibility. Finally, the relationship between college students’ home physical exercise behavior and college students’ disease beliefs during the period of COVID-19 is summarized through the survey results. It is found that there is a positive correlation between physical exercise method and disease belief, and the highest correlation dimension is depression, which means that the students who prefer home physical exercise are less likely to have depression. In addition, depression is the most relevant dimension to self-demand physical exercise method, and interpersonal sensitivity is the most relevant dimension to social expansion physical exercise method. Although the content of this exploration is true, there are still some shortcomings. The sample size is limited. In the future, the deep relationship between the home physical exercise behavior and the disease belief state of college students in different regions and with different personalities will be evaluated. The research results provide a reference for the relationship between college students’ home physical exercise behavior and disease belief state during the COVID-19 epidemic.



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