ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. Physical Education and Pedagogy
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2025.1509959
This article is part of the Research TopicBuilding Health Through Physical Activity in Schools - Volume IIView all 15 articles
Hierarchical clustering of the pre-exam anxiety levels in physically inactive and active adolescent students from 56 countries: An observational study using PISA program data
Provisionally accepted
Samuel Encarnação1*
José Eduardo Teixeira2
Pedro Forte3
Luciano Bernardes Leite1
Andrew Sortwell4
Luís Branquinho5
Ricardo Ferraz6
Pedro Afonso5
Paula Vaz1
António Miguel Monteiro1- 1Polytechnic Institute of Bragança (IPB), Bragança, Braganca, Portugal
- 2Instituto Politécnico da Guarda, Guarda, Guarda, Portugal
- 3Higher Institute of Educational Sciences of the Douro, Penafiel, Porto, Portugal
- 4University of Notre Dame Australia, Fremantle, Australia
- 5Polytechnic Institute of Portalegre, Portalegre, Portugal
- 6University of Beira Interior, Covilhã, Castelo Branco, Portugal
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The relationship between physical activity and anxiety among students has been extensively studied, with research highlighting the protective effects of physical activity on mental well-being. This article synthesizes existing literature on the topic and presents a novel analysis of pre-exam anxiety rates among physically inactive high school students from 56 countries. Using data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018, a hierarchical clustering method was applied to identify four clusters based on stratified country groups by the students' pre-exam anxiety levels. Results indicated five clusters for low-physically active students (three with higher anxiety rates, and two with lower levels of the condition) and four clusters regarding for the low-physically active individuals (two for higher anxiety rates and two within lower levels). Further, the hierarchical model worked with good precision in the clustering task. In conclusion, considering the low physically active students, Brazil (82%) and the Dominican Republic (81%) showed the highest pre-exam anxiety, while the Czech Republic (35%) had the lowest. Among the physically active students, Malaysia (82%), Brazil (81%), and Costa Rica (81%) recorded the highest anxiety levels, whereas again, the Czech Republic (35%) reported the lowest. These findings emphasize that although physical activity generally relates to reduced anxiety, this association varies across cultural and educational contexts.
Keywords: Anxiousness, Unsupervised machine learning, Teens, Healthy lifestyle, Social protection
Received: 11 Oct 2024; Accepted: 19 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Encarnação, Teixeira, Forte, Leite, Sortwell, Branquinho, Ferraz, Afonso, Vaz and Monteiro. 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: Samuel Encarnação, Polytechnic Institute of Bragança (IPB), Bragança, 5300-253, Braganca, Portugal
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