How Physical Activity is Associated With Sleep Quality Through Mobile Phone Addiction and Rumination in University Students

Summary

This study of 1,300 students shows that physical exercise is associated with lower PSQI scores, lower mobile phone addiction, and lower rumination. Mobile phone addiction and rumination form a sequential mediating pathway linking physical exercise to sleep quality, highlighting behavioral and cognitive-emotional factors associated with sleep quality in college students.

Abstract

Physical exercise is associated with sleep quality; however, the underlying mechanisms remain underexplored. This study examined whether mobile phone addiction and rumination mediate the relationship between physical exercise and sleep quality among college students. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 1,300 college students from seven universities. Physical exercise, sleep quality, mobile phone addiction, and rumination were assessed using the Physical Activity Rating Scale, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, the Mobile Phone Addiction Tendency Scale, and the Rumination Scale, respectively. Physical exercise negatively predicted mobile phone addiction, rumination, and PSQI scores (β = -0.039, p < 0.01; β = -0.011, p < 0.01; β = -0.022, p < 0.01, respectively). Because higher PSQI scores indicate poorer sleep quality, this negative association suggests better sleep quality. Mobile phone addiction positively predicted rumination and PSQI scores (β = 0.388, p < 0.01; β = 0.244, p < 0.01, respectively), and rumination positively predicted PSQI scores (β = 0.272, p < 0.01). The chain mediation model linking physical exercise to PSQI scores through mobile phone addiction and rumination was statistically significant. Physical exercise was associated with lower mobile phone addiction and rumination, which in turn were associated with lower PSQI scores and, therefore, better sleep quality. These findings support a chain mediation model in which mobile phone addiction and rumination explain part of the relationship between physical exercise and sleep quality and may inform interventions targeting sleep problems in college students.

Introduction

College students, as a key population for national development, have long attracted attention regarding their physical and mental well-being, with declining health becoming increasingly evident^1,2. Social progress and rising academic pressure have been associated with worsening sleep quality among college students³. According to the 2024 China Resident Sleep Health White Paper, average sleep duration among Chinese residents is 6.75 hours, with 28% sleeping less than 6 hours; among college students, 51% go to sleep after midnight and 19% after 2:00 AM, with a sleep disorder detection rat....

Protocol

All procedures involving human participants were conducted in accordance with the ethical standards of the Ankang University Review Committee and the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments. Ethical approval was obtained from the Ankang University Review Committee, Ankang University, China. No formal approval number was assigned. The study followed strict procedures to protect participant confidentiality. All participants provided written informed consent prior to participation. The research tools in the protocol are listed in the Table of Materials. Data preprocessing and descriptive analyses were performed using IBM SPSS Statistics 24.....

Results

This study employed a cross-sectional design to explore college students’ physical exercise and related variables. Therefore, a common method bias test was conducted prior to analysis. An exploratory factor analysis was performed on all items from the Mobile Phone Addiction Scale, Ruminative Thinking Scale, Physical Activity Rating Scale, and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. The analysis revealed that seven factors had eigenvalues greater than 1, and the first factor explained 20.713% of the variance, which is below t.......

Discussion

This study showed that physical exercise was associated with PSQI scores through the mediating effect of mobile phone addiction, indicating that participation in physical exercise was associated with lower levels of mobile phone addiction and lower PSQI scores, which indicate better sleep quality, among college students. This finding broadens the understanding of the pathways through which physical activity is associated with sleep quality and highlights the significance of mobile phone addiction as a mediating variable........

Materials

List of materials used in this article

Name	Company	Catalog Number	Comments
IBM SPSS Amos	IBM	Version 24.0	Structural equation modeling and model fit evaluation
IBM SPSS Statistics	IBM	Version 24.0	Data preprocessing, descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and regression analysis
Mobile Phone Addiction Tendency Scale for College Students	Xiong et al. (2012)57	N/A	Assessment of mobile phone addiction tendency
Online survey platform	Wenjuanxing	https://www.wjx.cn/	Digital questionnaire construction and data collection
Physical Activity Rating Scale-3	Liang (1994)58	N/A	Assessment of physical exercise level
Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index	Buysse et al. (1989)59; Liu et al. (1996)60	N/A	Assessment of sleep quality over the previous month
PROCESS macro	Hayes (2022)61	Version 3.5	Bootstrap-based mediation and chain mediation analysis
Ruminative Responses Scale	Nolen-Hoeksema (1991)47; Nolen-Hoeksema et al. (2008)40; Han & Yang (2009)72	N/A	Assessment of ruminative thinking