Using physical activity guidelines to examine associations between self-reported physical activity and depression symptoms in adolescent girls

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Palmer, Brianna R
Sluis, Rachel
Waters, Allison M
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2025
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Abstract

Objective: A well-established association has been observed between elevated depression and physical inactivity and the strength of this association is increasing, particularly among adolescent girls. However, little is understood regarding the association between depression and the World Health Organization’s (WHO) physical activity guideline dimensions: duration, intensity, and frequency. Such knowledge is important in guiding intervention and prevention recommendations. Therefore, the current study examined links between adolescent girls’ self-reported physical activity and depression symptoms using the WHO physical activity dimensions. Method: A sample of 477 Australian female participants (Mage = 16.19, SD = 0.39) self-reported their depression symptoms and physical activity for each WHO dimension through an online survey. Results: Girls who met one (p =.004), two (p =.002) or three (p =.027) dimensions exhibited significantly lower depression scores than those who met none. There were, however, no significant differences in depression scores between girls meeting one, two or three dimensions (all p = 1.00). Conclusion: Considering that lower depression is associated with meeting any one dimension relative to none at all, the findings suggest that meeting even just one dimension of physical activity may have beneficial effects on depression in adolescent girls.

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Australian Psychologist

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© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.

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This publication has been entered in Griffith Research Online as an advance online version.

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Psychology

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Palmer, BR; Sluis, R; Waters, AM, Using physical activity guidelines to examine associations between self-reported physical activity and depression symptoms in adolescent girls, Australian Psychologist, 2025

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