AI Insight
This quasi-experimental study with 240 Chinese undergraduate students found that those who participated in a 12-week aerobics course showed significantly higher levels of body awareness, body appreciation, and self-esteem compared to students in a standard physical education course. The improvements in self-esteem appeared to be partially explained by increases in body awareness and body appreciation. However, because classes were not randomly assigned and only eight intact classes were studied, the results represent associations rather than definitive causal effects of aerobics specifically.
Why it matters
The findings suggest that aerobics courses in university settings may offer psychological benefits beyond physical fitness, potentially helping to address the elevated rates of negative body image and low self-esteem common among undergraduate students. This could inform the design of university physical education programs to emphasize body-positive outcomes rather than solely fitness or weight-related goals.
Understand the Science
Undergraduate students have a higher risk of negative body image and low self-esteem, and the majority of exercise interventions in this population focus on fitness or weight rather than how students see their bodies. This quasi-experimental study examined whether a 12-week university aerobics course was associated with greater week-12 body awareness, body appreciation, and self-esteem than a comparison physical-education course, while controlling for baseline scores, and whether early change in body awareness and subsequent change in body appreciation statistically accounted for change in self-esteem. Two hundred forty undergraduates from a single university in China, nested within eight intact physical-education classes (four aerobics, four comparison), were assessed at baseline and at weeks 4, 8, and 12. Because the condition was assigned at the class level, the class, rather than the individual student, served as the unit of condition assignment and the independent replication. The primary week-12 analysis used baseline-adjusted ANCOVA, with class-level clustering taken into account in the inference. At week 12, the aerobics group had higher adjusted scores than the comparison group in terms of body awareness [b = 0.43, 95% CI (0.29, 0.56)], body appreciation [b = 0.18, 95% CI (0.09, 0.28)], and self-esteem [b = 0.77, 95% CI (0.62, 0.91)]. In an exploratory class-cluster-bootstrapped mediation model, the indirect estimate following the hypothesized sequence from course condition through change in body awareness and body appreciation to change in self-esteem was different from zero [0.146, 95% CI (0.079, 0.240)]; however, this estimate was similar in magnitude to the two individual indirect pathways and should be considered descriptive and hypothesis-generating rather than evidence for a uniquely supported sequential mechanism. Students in the aerobics course scored higher on body awareness, body appreciation, and self-esteem at week 12 than students in a comparison physical-education course, and exploratory analyses were consistent with body awareness and body appreciation accounting for part of this association. Because the assignment was non-random, only eight intact classes were included, and the comparison condition was not fully described, the findings should be interpreted as between-course differences rather than evidence of an aerobics-specific causal effect.