Benefits of Physical Exercise on Self-Efficacy and Learning in Students: Systematic and Meta-Analytic Review

Abstract

Currently, the importance of daily physical exercise for students is relevant since it has an impact on their health. In this sense, the importance of interventions to promote students' physical exercise is relevant. Therefore, the aim of this study was to identify, through a systematic and meta-analytic review, the importance of interventions to improve physical activity on student learning. Consequently, a qualitative study was carried out by means of a search for articles in different databases, specifically Scielo, CINAHL Complete, Scopus, Psicodoc and PsycINFO.  A total of 232 studies were obtained which, after applying the established inclusion criteria, left 4 investigations for review and 2 for meta-analysis. The results were significant in favour of the intervention of sports practice in students for the variables studied with a 95% CI, -1.00 (-1.27, -0.72); p ≤ 0.00001 for the learning variable and a 95% CI, -0.94 (-1.09, -0.80); p ≤ 0.00001 for the self-efficacy variable. The heterogeneity of the interventions was moderate for both variables. Specifically, I² = 69% for learning and I² = 56% for self-efficacy. In conclusion, the results found in the present work are considered relevant. These results offer the possibility that the community in general and the educational community, should be aware of the importance of physical exercise in improving the quality of life of students.