scholarly journals Investigating The Benefits of Online Running Groups On The Well-Being of Their Female Running Members

Author(s):  
Susan Hughes ◽  
Anne Moorhead

Abstract BackgroundOnline running communities are becoming increasingly prevalent within social media, and many groups have been exclusively established for female runners. The aim of this study was to investigate the wellbeing benefits and limitations of using Facebook running groups among women. MethodologyThe research design was a quantitative online survey. This survey was completed by 349 adult members of Facebook running groups for women. The online survey consisted of a validated scale, the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS), to calculate individual wellbeing scores. Data were analysed using SPSS, conducting descriptives, frequencies and correlations tests. ResultsThe results showed that 14% of participants’ scores indicated a high level of wellbeing, 66% had a wellbeing score in the moderate range and 21% of participants scored in the range of low-level wellbeing. Participants specified how they perceived women’s running Facebook groups to benefit or limit areas of wellbeing. Responses indicated perceived benefits to sense of optimism, interest in other people and sense of feeling good about themselves. There were negligible perceived wellbeing limitations. Members who had been running for the longest reported to engage more frequently with the groups, which may suggest their identities as runners have strengthened over time. ConclusionOverall, this study clearly found that women’s running Facebook groups can provide wellbeing benefits for their members.

RISORSA UOMO ◽  
2009 ◽  
pp. 415-429
Author(s):  
Fabio Massei ◽  
Salvatore Zappalŕ

- Research have shown that characteristics of the work environments are related to employees' well-being, performance and individual innovation. The study, carried out in a small manufacturing company (N = 32), using the Karasek's model and a longitudinal research design, shows that characteristics of the work environments influence workers' engagement and the frequency with which employees experienced positive emotion on the job. The level of employees' innovativeness at T1 predicts job demands perceived at T2. Work characteristics are not related to employees' performance and to employees' propensity in suggesting ideas. Instead, an high level of control and a low level of demands fostering ideas implementation.


Author(s):  
Adrianos Golemis ◽  
Panteleimon Voitsidis ◽  
Eleni Parlapani ◽  
Vasiliki A Nikopoulou ◽  
Virginia Tsipropoulou ◽  
...  

Summary COVID-19 and the related quarantine disrupted young adults’ academic and professional life, daily routine and socio-emotional well-being. This cross-sectional study focused on the emotional and behavioural responses of a young adult population during the COVID-19-related quarantine in April 2020, in Greece. The study was conducted through an online survey. A total of 1559 young adults, aged 18−30 years, completed Steele’s Social Responsibility Motivation Scale and the De Jong Gierveld Loneliness Scale, and answered questions about compliance with instructions, quarantine-related behaviours and coping strategies. According to the results, participants displayed a relatively high sense of social responsibility (M = 16.09, SD = 2.13) and a trend towards moderate feeling of loneliness (M = 2.65, SD = 1.62); young women reported significantly higher levels of loneliness than men. The majority complied with instructions often (46.4%) or always (44.8%). Significantly more women created a new social media account and used the social media longer than 5 h/day, compared with men. Resorting to religion, practicing sports and sharing thoughts and feelings about COVID-19 with others predicted higher levels of social responsibility; humour, practicing sports and sharing thoughts and feelings about COVID-19 with others predicted lower levels of loneliness. Conclusively, COVID-19 is expected to have a significant psychological impact on young adults. Currently, Greece is going through the second quarantine period. This study raises awareness about loneliness in young adults during the COVID-19-related quarantine and highlights the importance of developing online programmes, attractive to younger people, to nurture adaptive coping strategies against loneliness.


Author(s):  
Anna Lipert ◽  
Remigiusz Kozłowski ◽  
Dariusz Timler ◽  
Michał Marczak ◽  
Kamila Musiał ◽  
...  

Background: The coronavirus pandemic and the government restrictions significantly disturbed the daily functioning of people, thereby influencing healthy behaviors, such as physical activity—the core indicator of well-being. This study evaluates the associations between physical activity (PA), the level of stress and quality of sleep during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Methods: An online survey was distributed during the governmental lockdown in April 2020 and included measures for assessing physical activity, stress and sleep. The surveyed participants included all adults aged 18 years and over. The final data were collected from the 1959 respondents using: International Physical Activity Questionnaire-Short Form (IPAQ-SF), Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). Findings: Almost half of the respondents indicated a low level of PA, performing only 60 min of PA daily. Most of the participants reported a moderate or high level of stress (57% and 29%, respectively) and 64% of them reported poor quality of sleep. People with low levels of stress performed on average 85.1 min/day of walking (WPA), 40.9 min/day of moderate PA (MPA) or 52.6 min/day of vigorous PA (VPA). People with good quality of sleep performed 82.9 min/day of WPA, 43.6 min/day MPA and 40.5 min/day VPA. Interpretation: The results from the study indicate that the volume of daily PA may be a predictor of the level of stress and sleep quality in adults during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. To retain a low level of stress and good quality of sleep, a lifestyle that allows to achieve a moderate level of physical activity should be maintained. The optimal daily dose of PA is at least 70 min per day, involving different intensities.


Author(s):  
Yang Yang ◽  
Keqiao Liu ◽  
Siqi Li ◽  
Man Shu

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically changed the general population’s life worldwide. People may spend more time on social media because of policies like “work at home”. Using a cross-sectional dataset collected through an online survey in February 2020, in China, we examined (1) the relationships between social media activities and people’s mental health status and (2) the moderation effect of emotional-regulation strategies. The sample included people aged ≥18 years from 32 provinces and regions in China (N = 3159). The inferential analyses included a set of multiple linear regressions with interactions. Our results showed that sharing timely, accurate, and positive COVID-19 information, reducing excessive discussions on COVID-19, and promoting caring online interactions rather than being judgmental, might positively associate with the general public’s psychological well-being. Additionally, the relationships between social media activities and psychological well-being varied at different emotion-regulation strategy levels. Adopting the cognitive reappraisal strategy might allay the adverse relationships between certain social media activities and mental health indicators. Our findings expanded the theory of how social media activities can be associated with a human being’s mental health and how it can interact with emotion-regulation strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic.


2019 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob A. De Coning ◽  
Sebastiaan Rothmann ◽  
Marius W. Stander

Orientation: Research regarding subjective well-being (including life satisfaction and domain-specific satisfaction) is necessary, given the effects thereof on health, work performance, social relationships and ethical behaviour of employees.Research purpose: This study aimed to investigate the relationships among life satisfaction, job satisfaction and wage satisfaction, as well as how these relationships related to gross wage category in a South African sample.Motivation for the study: While research has shown that wage level and wage satisfaction are positively associated with both job and life satisfaction, the question arises whether wage level and satisfaction would compensate for the negative effect of a dissatisfying job on life satisfaction.Research approach/design and method: A cross-sectional design was used. A non-probability convenience sample (N = 763) in the form of the WageIndicator data set was obtained. Hierarchical log-linear analyses and cross-tabulations were carried out to determine the relationships that existed among the constructs.Main findings: Although job satisfaction and wage satisfaction were strongly related at a low level of wage satisfaction, fewer people were satisfied with their jobs at a high level of wage satisfaction level. Moreover, while job and life satisfaction were strongly related at a low level of job satisfaction level, relatively fewer people were satisfied with their lives at a high level of job satisfaction level. Wage dissatisfaction was associated with dissatisfaction with life but was more strongly associated with life satisfaction at a high level of wage satisfaction. Wage category and wage satisfaction did not interact with the job satisfaction level in affecting life satisfaction.Practical/managerial implications: Managers should attend to the perceptions of wage dissatisfaction at low wage and wage satisfaction levels. Such dissatisfaction may have a negative impact on the job and life satisfaction of employees and result in detrimental effects on employees and organisations.Contribution/value-add: This study contributes to scientific knowledge regarding the relationships between wage, wage satisfaction, job dissatisfaction and life satisfaction.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Samina Rafique ◽  
M. Najam-ul-Islam ◽  
M. Shafique ◽  
A. Mahmood

Sit-to-stand (STS) motion is an indicator of an individual’s physical independence and well-being. Determination of various variables that contribute to the execution and control of STS motion is an active area of research. In this study, we evaluate the clinical hypothesis that besides numerous other factors, the central nervous system (CNS) controls STS motion by tracking a prelearned head position trajectory. Motivated by the evidence for a task-oriented encoding of motion by the CNS, we adopt a robotic approach for the synthesis of STS motion and propose this scheme as a solution to this hypothesis. We propose an analytical biomechanical human CNS modeling framework where the head position trajectory defines the high-level task control variable. The motion control is divided into low-level task generation and motor execution phases. We model CNS as STS controller and its Estimator subsystem plans joint trajectories to perform the low-level task. The motor execution is done through the Cartesian controller subsystem that generates torque commands to the joints. We do extensive motion and force capture experiments on human subjects to validate our analytical modeling scheme. We first scale our biomechanical model to match the anthropometry of the subjects. We do dynamic motion reconstruction through the control of simulated custom human CNS models to follow the captured head position trajectories in real time. We perform kinematic and kinetic analyses and comparison of experimental and simulated motions. For head position trajectories, root mean square (RMS) errors are 0.0118 m in horizontal and 0.0315 m in vertical directions. Errors in angle estimates are 0.55 rad, 0.93 rad, 0.59 rad, and 0.0442 rad for ankle, knee, hip, and head orientation, respectively. RMS error of ground reaction force (GRF) is 50.26 N, and the correlation between ground reaction torque and the support moment is 0.72. Low errors in our results validate (1) the reliability of motion/force capture methods and anthropometric technique for customization of human models and (2) high-level task control framework and human CNS modeling as a solution to the hypothesis. Accurate modeling and detailed understanding of human motion can have significant scope in the fields of rehabilitation, humanoid robotics, and virtual characters’ motion planning based on high-level task control schemes.


First Monday ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iffat Ali Aksar ◽  
Mahmoud Danaee ◽  
Huma Maqsood ◽  
Amira Firdaus

Social media use has been increasing apace regardless of geographical and economic boundaries. In particular, its penetration has occurred more rapidly in developing and low-income countries with abounding health and psychological disadvantages. Given the understanding that women are more prone to psychological disorders than men, the current research is an effort to examine social media motives and subsequent effects on the psychological well-being of women social media users in Pakistan. The study is based on an online survey conducted to ascertain as to what extent social media use contributes to women’s psychological well-being or otherwise. The survey recorded responses of 240 women selected through purposive sampling technique. SEM-PLS analysis of the collected data revealed that social media usage plays a meaningful role in women’s psychological health. However, results exposed that Pakistani women, under the traditional patriarchal social pressure, not only have to observe cultural norms in online practices but are also forced to adhere to socially constructed gender roles in online spaces. The mixed results suggest conducting extensive research for a deeper insight into the role of social media in psychological well-being of women in other low-income countries.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lizzy Winstone ◽  
Becky Mars ◽  
CMA Haworth ◽  
Jon Heron ◽  
Judi Kidger

Background There is mixed evidence as to the effects of different types of social media use on mental health, but previous research has been platform-specific and has focused on an oversimplified distinction between active and passive use. This study aimed to identify different underlying subgroups of adolescent social media user based on their pattern of social media activities and test associations between user type and future mental health. Methods Students from nineteen schools (N=2,456) in south-west England completed an online survey measuring thirteen social media activities and four psychosocial outcomes (past year self-harm, depression, anxiety and poor well-being) at age 13 years (October 2019) and repeated a year later (October 2020; aged 14 years). Latent class analysis using Mplus identified distinct classes of social media user. A bias-adjusted three-step model was used to test associations between class membership at baseline and mental health at follow-up. Analyses were adjusted for gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, disability, social media screen-time and baseline mental health.Results A four-class model of social media user at baseline was selected based on fit statistics and interpretability. User types were labelled High Communicators; Moderate Communicators; Broadcasters; and Minimal users. Broadcasters at age 13 had the poorest mental health outcomes at age 14, with mental health and well-being generally better in the two Communicator groups. Conclusions Findings suggest that adolescents with high levels of content sharing – in addition to socialising and browsing online – are most likely to be experiencing poor mental health a year later. Recommendations regarding social media use should move beyond screen-time to consider different user types, and mental health implications of their engagement with different online activities.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 596-607
Author(s):  
Yuanita Setyastuti ◽  
Jenny Ratna Seminar ◽  
Purwanti Hadisiwi ◽  
Feliza Zubair

Purpose of the study: This study aims to describe the influence of millennial moms' perceptions about father involvement of parenting and household tasks to her marital well-being and its impact on her emotional self-disclosure (ESD) about parenting in social media. Methodology: This study was a quantitative approach to online survey methods. The subjects are moms born in 1978-1994, have young children and social media users. The online survey distributed to 450 millennial mothers used Emotional Self Disclosure (ESD) Scale and Marital Well Being scale, including Marital Satisfaction, Marital Conflict, Parenting Stress, and Depression. Data analysis used path analysis through Smart PLS. Main Findings: The results show that mother perception of the father's involvement influences millennial moms' marital well-being and impact on Millennial moms' Emotional Self Disclosure (ESD) about Parenting in Social Media. The higher the millennial moms' perception of the father's involvement in parenting and household tasks, the higher their marital well-being. The higher the millennial mom's marital well-being, the less their Emotional Self Disclosure (ESD) about Parenting in Social Media. Applications of this study: This study is important and useful because it shows how important a husband's involvement in family so millennial family could escalate husband involvement in parenting and household task to maintain the marital well-being. This result also proves the importance of managing social media content because it can indicate marital well being. Novelty/Originality of this study: The findings of this study provide new evidence that emotional self-disclosure shown on social media suggests a person's marital well-being. Also new provide that mother perceptions about husband's involvement influence marital well-being.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (16) ◽  
pp. 3516
Author(s):  
Silvana Miceli ◽  
Barbara Caci ◽  
Michele Roccella ◽  
Luigi Vetri ◽  
Giuseppe Quatrosi ◽  
...  

Several studies evidenced increased elevated symptomatology levels in anxiety, general stress, depression, and post-traumatic stress related to COVID-19. Real difficulties in the effective control of time that could be responsible for mental health issues and loss of vitality were also reported. Prior literature highlighted how perceived control over time significantly modulates anxiety disorders and promotes psychological well-being. To verify the hypothesis that perceived control over time predicts fear of COVID-19 and mental health and vitality mediate this relationship, we performed an online survey on a sample of 301 subjects (female = 68%; Mage = 22.12, SD = 6.29; age range = 18–57 years), testing a parallel mediation model using PROCESS macro (model 4). All participants responded to self-report measures of perceived control over time, COVID-19 fear, mental health, and vitality subscales of the Short-Form-36 Health Survey. Results corroborate the hypotheses of direct relationships between all the study variables and partially validate the mediation’s indirect effect. Indeed, mental health (a1b1 = −0.06; CI: LL = −0.11; UL = −0.01; p < 0.001) rather than vitality (a2b2 = −0.06; CI: LL = −0.09; UL = 0.03; n.s.) emerges as a significant mediator between perceived control over time and fear of COVID-19. Practical implications of the study about treatment programs based on perceived control over time and emotional coping to prevent fear and anxiety toward the COVID-19 pandemic are discussed.


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