ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Sport Psychology
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvances in Sports Science: Latest Findings and New Scientific Proposals- Volume IVView all articles
The relationship between physical exercise and Chinese college students' career decision-making difficulties: a chain mediating model of psychological capital and employment attitude
Provisionally accepted
- 1Qiannan Normal College For Nationalities, Duyun, China
- 2Shandong Sport University, Jinan, China
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This study aims to explore the relationship mechanism between physical exercise and career decision-making difficulty (CDMD) among Chinese college students, and proposes a chain mediation model involving psychological capital and employment attitude. A non-probability convenience sampling method was used to conduct an online questionnaire survey among students from two universities in Guizhou Province. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling and 5,000 bootstrap resamples. The results showed that physical exercise was significantly negatively correlated with CDMD. Psychological capital played a core mediating role in this relationship, presenting a chain mediation path of physical exercise → psychological capital → employment attitude → CDMD. This study fills the theoretical gap by establishing a new comprehensive framework and provides insights for intervention measures to improve career decision-making ability.
Keywords: physical exercise1, Career Decision-Making Difficulties2, psychological capita3, Employment Attitude4, Chinese college students5
Received: 27 Aug 2025; Accepted: 29 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Fang, Xu, Hong, Li, Sun, 苟 and Wen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yuan Fang, acad_fangyuan@163.com
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