Background/Purpose This study examined health benefits of physical activity on physical self-concept and stress between American and Turkish college students.
Method A total of 548 (238-American and 310-Turkish) selected from two comprehensive universities, one each from Southern California and Ankara, Turkey participated in this study. Participants completed the following questionnaires in English and Turkish; demographic questions, the Godin Leisure-Time Exercise Questionnaire (GLTEQ; Godin & Shephard, 1985), the Physical Self-Description Questionnaire (PSDQ; Marsh, Richards, Johnson, Roche, & Tremayne, 1994) and a 20-item version of the General Well-Being (MHI; Heubeck & Neil, 2000).
Analysis/Results The results indicated that a meaningful comparison of PSDQ scores can be made between American and Turkish college students. Significant group differences at .001 were found between groups on Age, BMI, Height, Weight, Health, Coordination, Action, Body-fat, Sport, Global physical-self, Strength, Global esteem, Psychological distress, and GLTEQ. American college students showed higher scores on most variables, except height, perceived body-fat, global physical-self.
Conclusions Despite more physical activity involvements in self-reported vigorous activity among American students, a higher score on BMIMean=26.1 from Americans was revealed, compared to Turkish BMIMean=21.1. Interestingly, American students self-reported lower scores on body-fat. In addition, American students showed a higher score on psychological distress. These two conflict findings raise the question as to whether the amount of physical activity is sufficient to actually reduce the BMI or simply enhances perceived confidence of body fat. Different ethnic groups have varying ideas about the meaning of overweight and obesity that may be different from those of mainstream American culture.
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