| Abstract [eng] |
This master's thesis examines the relationship between leisure-time physical activity and subjective health assessment among young adults aged 18–24 in Lithuania. Grounded in the biopsychosocial model of health and guided by the hypothesis that greater regularity and intensity of leisure-time physical activity is associated with better subjective health self-assessment, the study employed a quantitative cross-sectional survey design with a convenience and purposive sample of 210 respondents recruited online through student and youth networks across Lithuania. Physical activity was measured using an adapted IPAQ-SF instrument capturing high-intensity, moderate-intensity, and walking activities by frequency and duration, while subjective health was operationalized through five items assessing overall health, energy, pain, psychological well-being, and self-compared physical capacity; data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and Spearman rank correlation at a significance level of α = 0.05. The findings confirmed the hypothesis across all health dimensions: respondents in the high physical activity group reported markedly better subjective health scores — with 82.1% rating their health as good or very good compared to 23.4% in the low activity group — and high-intensity activity demonstrated a stronger association with subjective health than moderate-intensity activity, indicating that intensity carries independent value beyond total activity volume. Sedentary behavior, including sitting time and smartphone use during leisure, was negatively associated with health across all dimensions, with smartphone use showing the strongest link to poorer psychological well-being. The primary barriers to physical activity reported were lack of time, fatigue, and lack of motivation, while the leading motivators were health improvement and physical well-being. The study acknowledges key limitations inherent to its cross-sectional design — namely the inability to establish causal direction — as well as potential common method bias from self-reported measurement of both variables, convenience sampling, and the absence of controls for confounders such as sleep, socioeconomic status, and academic stress. |
