Association of Stress Severity and Exercise Motivation Among Undergraduate Students in Karachi

Abstract

Background: Undergraduate students frequently experience elevated stress due to academic demands and lifestyle disruption, which may influence health behaviors, including physical activity; understanding whether stress severity relates to exercise motivation can inform student-focused health promotion. Objective: To determine stress severity and exercise motivation among undergraduate students in Karachi and to assess the association between stress severity and multidimensional exercise motivation. Methods: A cross-sectional observational study was conducted in Karachi from October 17 to December 17, 2023, recruiting undergraduate students aged 19–25 years from public and private universities using purposive sampling. Participants completed a sociodemographic form, the Student Stress Inventory–2 (SSI-2) to quantify stress severity, and the Exercise Motivation Inventory–2 (EMI-2) to assess 14 motivational subscales. Data were analyzed in IBM SPSS Statistics v16; normality was assessed using Shapiro–Wilk, and Spearman’s rank correlation tested associations between SSI-2 total scores and EMI-2 subscales at α = 0.05. Results: Of 215 responses, 203 were analyzed; 74.9% were female. Most students had moderate stress (66.5%), followed by mild (27.1%) and severe stress (6.4%), with a mean SSI-2 score of 92.35 ± 19.52. The highest exercise motives were positive health (3.43 ± 1.47), strength and endurance (3.25 ± 1.53), and ill-health avoidance (3.04 ± 1.56), while social recognition was lowest (2.10 ± 1.48). SSI-2 scores showed no significant correlation with any EMI-2 subscale (all p > 0.05; |rₛ| ≤ 0.103). Conclusion: Karachi undergraduates commonly reported moderate stress and predominantly health-oriented exercise motives; stress severity was not associated with exercise motivation domains, suggesting other determinants may better explain motivational patterns in this population.