University students who met more movement-related guidelines tended to report better positive mental health, according to a survey of 1,856 undergraduates in Hunan, China. The study counted how many of three targets each student met: at least 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity a week, no more than three hours of recreational screen time a day, and seven to nine hours of sleep a night. The result was an association, not evidence that changing these habits would improve mental health.
The pattern became stronger as the number of guidelines rose. Compared with students who met none, the reported total statistical association with positive mental health was 0.165 for meeting one guideline, 0.392 for meeting two, and 0.621 for meeting all three. These are statistical effect estimates, not percentages.
The researchers also found that the connection was partly associated with how well students felt they were adapting to university and how resilient they were. In the main analysis, the total statistical association was 0.232, while the portion linked through those two measures in sequence was 0.047. The study describes these as indirect statistical associations because all the measures were collected at the same time.
Complete adherence was uncommon
Sleep was the easiest target for students to meet: 58.8% reached the sleep guideline. Physical activity came next at 43.3%, while 30.7% met the recreational screen-time target. Overall, 21.2% met none of the three guidelines, 36.0% met one, 31.6% met two, and 11.2% met all three.
The exposure measure was an additive score from zero to three, based on the number of targets met. Recreational screen time covered only screen use for leisure, not total sedentary time, and the score was not a measure of the full day’s behavioral composition.
Positive mental health was measured with the 14-item MHC-SF, a questionnaire scored on a six-point frequency scale from zero to five, with higher scores indicating better positive mental health.
What the analysis found
Guideline adherence had modest positive correlations with university adaptation, psychological resilience and positive mental health. The reported correlation coefficients were 0.318, 0.286 and 0.301, respectively. In plain terms, students with broader adherence generally also reported better scores on those measures, but the relationships were not strong.
The researchers then used a serial indirect-effects model, a form of regression analysis that tested whether adherence was statistically connected with adaptation, then resilience, and finally positive mental health. The model accounted for 11.0% of the variation in adaptation, 32.4% in resilience and 40.7% in positive mental health. All reported paths were positive and had p values below 0.001.
The main model was checked another way by treating adherence as four groups rather than as a single count. The same graded pattern remained, with larger reported associations for students meeting two or three guidelines than for those meeting one, each compared with meeting none. The indirect-effect intervals in that analysis excluded zero.
The limits matter
The survey was cross-sectional, meaning the students’ behaviors, adaptation, resilience and mental-health scores were assessed concurrently. That makes it impossible to establish which came first. The analysis therefore supports statistical associations, not a causal pathway or proof of mediation.
The sample was recruited by convenience from two universities. Of 2,381 questionnaires distributed, 525 were excluded and 1,856 were retained, an effective response rate of 77.95%. The students had a mean age of 19.13 years, with a standard deviation of 0.56 years. The findings therefore describe this relatively narrow sample rather than students everywhere.
A diagnostic for common-method bias found that the first unrotated factor accounted for 26.84% of variance, below the commonly used 40% threshold. The authors noted that this test cannot rule out common-method variance. The three scales showed acceptable-to-good internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha of 0.821 for adaptation, 0.834 for resilience and 0.747 for positive mental health, all above 0.70.
The authors say future research should follow students over time or test interventions to determine whether changes in these behaviors precede changes in adaptation, resilience and positive mental health. It should also test whether particular combinations of behaviors matter more than an equal-weight score.
The authors declared that they received no financial support for the work or its publication.
Paper data and sources
Original title: A healthier day, a healthier mind: linking 24-h movement behavior guideline adherence to mental health in university students
Authors: Shan S, Zheng B
Journal/Repository: Frontiers in psychology
Status: Peer-reviewed
First online: 2026-10-08
DOI: Not available
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