Lakehead University is getting a $25,000 grant to study how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted student’s physical activity and mental health.
Professor Ian Newhouse and Associate Professor Erin Pearson, both from Lakehead University’s School of Kinesiology, will be heading the research.
Dr. Pearson explains she’s noticed trends in university students’ physical activity since the start of the pandemic.
“Interestingly, what we’ve seen is that some people have actually increased their physical activity during COVID to cope, or as a form of stress release, whereas others have had their levels decline or stay at zero,” she notes.
Dr. Pearson feels this is an important subject to study.
“This has been a really hard year, and for university students in particular we’ve seen evidence of poor mental health, partly in response to the remote learning shift and lots of really important life facets,” she explains. “Because we’re researchers in the School of Kinesiology, we are interested in learning more about physical activity and how that can be used as a health promoting strategy in various populations.”
Dr. Newhouse says the this project would last around a year.
“We’re just bringing it through ethics now and we hope to recruit our participants in September, and we’ll do the quantitative portion of this study that first semester. Interviews would follow in February of next year,” he says.
This study will help identify barriers to physical activity and the connection to student mental health, and help develop future programs to benefit students.
