An Examination Into the Relationship Between Occupational Physical Activity and Behavioral Outcomes
Open Access
- Author:
- Gladysiewski, Mya Sophia
- Area of Honors:
- Kinesiology
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Melissa Jean Bopp, Thesis Supervisor
Mary Jane De Souza, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Occupational Physcial Activity
physical activity - Abstract:
- A broad range of positive advances to health status, chronic disease, and mental illnesses are associated with physical activity. Exercise provides protective effects against many noncommunicable diseases and has shown to be a beneficial form of treatment for mental illnesses. An individual spends approximately 8 hours of their day at work, so their workplace movement is significantly influential in their overall physical activity. Occupational physical activity can impact health in many ways, depending on if a position is typically sedentary or active. Additionally, exercise may provide additional benefits to workplace performance and employee health and psychosocial outcomes. This study aimed to identify if occupational physical activity influenced constituent behaviors underlying overall health and workplace success in employees. Participants were employees of Dot Foods Inc (n = 48) separated into two occupational groups including office employees (n = 30) and warehouse and truck drivers (n = 18). The sample was majority female (51.1%), non-Hispanic whites (83.0%). This experiment served as an exploratory study to determine if relationships existed between leisure PA, occupational PA, and these underlying behaviors of successful workplace outcomes. Participants were asked to participate in a subjective survey analyzing self-reported leisure PA, occupational PA, pain, workplace performance, and psychosocial behaviors. SPSS software was used to analyze the data, where t-tests and correlations were set at p<0.05. The study found that warehouse employees and CDS drivers had significantly higher levels of occupational physical activity (p < 0.001). Warehouse and CDS drivers reported a higher amount of LVPA compared with Office workers (p = 0.01). Warehouse and CDS drivers had higher self-reported stress scores compared with Office workers (p = 0.06) Future studies could benefit from using a larger sample size and more objective measurements of PA to potentially find more significant differences between occupational PA and health outcomes.