French college students' sports practice and its relations with stress, coping strategies and academic success

Abstract

College students at university have to face several stress factors. Although sports prac-tice has been considered as having beneficial effects upon stress and general health, few studies have documented its influence on this specific population. The aim of this compar-ative study was to determine whether the intensity of the college students' sports practice (categorized into three groups: rare, regular, or intensive) would influence their levels of stress and self-efficacy, their coping strategies, and their academic success/failure. Three self-completion questionnaires were administered to 1071 French freshmen during their compulsory medical visit at the preventive medicine service of the university. Results indi-cated that students with intensive sport practice reported lower scores of general stress, academic stress, and emotion-focused coping strategies, and higher scores of self-efficacy than those with rare practice. However, the proportion of successful students did not differ significantly between the three groups of sports practice. © 2012 Décamps, Boujut and Brisset.