The Korean government (Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Ministry of Health and Welfare, and Ministry of Education) has framed policies and conducted many projects to encourage adolescents to be more physically active. Despite these efforts, the participation rate of physical activity in Korean adolescents keeps decreasing. Thus, the purpose of this study was to analyze the perception of sports and physical activity in Korean adolescents through big data analysis of the last 10 years and to provide research data and statistical direction with regard to sports and physical activity participation in Korean adolescents. For data collection, data from 1 January 2010 to 31 December 2019 were collected from Naver (NAVER Corp., Seongnam, Korea), Daum (Kakao Corp., Jeju, Korea), and Google (Alphabet Inc., Mountain View, CA, USA), which are the most widely used search engines in Korea, using TEXTOM 4.0 (The Imc Inc., Daegu, Korea), a big data collection and analysis solution. Keywords such as “adolescent + sports + physical activity” were used. TEXTOM 4.0 can generate various collection lists at once using keywords. Collected data were processed through text mining (frequency analysis, term frequency–inverse document frequency analysis) and social network analysis (SNA) (degree centrality, convergence of iterated correlations analysis) by using TEXTOM 4.0 and UCINET 6 social network analysis software (Analytic Technologies Corp., Lexington, KY, USA). A total of 9278 big data (10.36 MB) were analyzed. Frequency analysis of the top 50 terms through text mining showed exercise (872), mind (851), health (824), program (782), and burden (744) in a descending order. Term frequency–inverse document frequency analysis revealed exercise (2108.070), health (1961.843), program (1928.765), mind (1861.837), and burden (1722.687) in a descending order. SNA showed that the terms with the greatest degree of centrality were exercise (0.02857), program (0.02406), mind (0.02079), health (0.02062), and activity (0.01872) in a descending order. Convergence of the iterated correlations analysis indicated five clusters: exercise and health, child to adult, sociocultural development, therapy, and program. However, female gender, sports for all, stress, and wholesome did not have a high enough correlation to form one cluster. Thus, this study provides basic data and statistical direction to increase the rate of physical activity participation in Korean adolescents by drawing significant implications based on terms and clusters through bid data analysis.

Although participating in regular physical activity has many benefits, female Korean college students tend to have much lower participation rates than their male counterparts. An effective means of increasing physical activity among female college students is sport participation. The purpose of this study is to incorporate three types of psychological needs from self-determination theory as precursor background variables into the theory of planned behavior to predict sport participation among female Korean college students. Our dataset consisted of 494 female undergraduate students attending Kyung Hee University in South Korea. Using structural equation modeling, the direct and indirect effects of attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, and psychological needs satisfaction such as competency, relatedness, and autonomy were examined. Although attitude towards and perceived behavioral control over sport participation were significantly associated with intention in all three models, subjective norm was not significantly associated with intention in any model. Satisfaction of the psychological needs for competency, relatedness, and autonomy had positive indirect effects on sport participation. This study underscores the importance of addressing the satisfaction of these three basic psychological needs when designing future sport promotion interventions for female college students.

In the present study, we used big data analysis to examine the key attributes related to stress and mental health among Korean Taekwondo student-athletes. Keywords included “Taekwondo + Student athlete + Stress + Mental health”. Naver and Google databases were searched to identify research published between 1 January 2010 and 31 December 2019. Text-mining analysis was performed on unstructured texts using TEXTOM 4.5, with social network analysis performed using UCINET 6. In total, 3149 large databases (1.346 MB) were analyzed. Two types of text-mining analyses were performed, namely, frequency analysis and term frequency-inverse document frequency analysis. For the social network analysis, the degree centrality and convergence of iterated correlation analysis were used to deduce the node-linking degree in the network and to identify clusters. The top 10 most frequently used terms were “stress”, “Taekwondo”, “health”, “player”, “student”, “mental”, “exercise”, “mental health”, “relieve”, and “child.” The top 10 most frequently occurring results of the TF-IDF analysis were “Taekwondo”, “health”, “player”, “exercise”, “student”, “mental”, “stress”, “mental health”, “child” and “relieve”. The degree centrality analysis yielded similar results regarding the top 10 terms. The convergence of iterated correlation analysis identified six clusters: student, start of dream, diet, physical and mental, sports activity, and adult Taekwondo center. Our results emphasize the importance of designing interventions that attenuate stress and improve mental health among Korean Taekwondo student-athletes.

This study aimed to identify the effect of trust in and contents of sports-related policies during COVID-19 on public policy satisfaction and examine the relationship between policy satisfaction and sports participation intention. People living in Korea were selected as the study population using convenience sampling, and 441 responses were collected using an online questionnaire. Data were analyzed using SPSS 23.0. The results indicated that policy trust had a positive effect on policy satisfaction in the order of consistency, expertise, and existing policy performance. In addition, social equity, market responsiveness, and policy effectiveness, which are sub-factors of policy content, had a positive effect on policy satisfaction. Furthermore, sports policy satisfaction had a negative effect on sports participation intention. This study suggests that the government should equally consider policy trust and content when establishing sports-related policies and strive to establish policies based on the positive functions of sports.

Background: The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has continued since the outbreak in December 2019. People experience depression and anxiety due to government policies and restrictions on physical activity due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aimed to compare and analyze people’s experiences of COVID-19 blues, sports policy awareness, and participation intention according to their vaccination status. Methods: This quantitative study used an online survey to collect demographic information, vaccination status, and variables. Data validity and reliability were verified through confirmatory factor analysis, and Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were calculated using SPSS/AMOS 23.0. Finally, this comparative study was conducted using multivariate analysis of variance to investigate the differences in the dependent variables between the groups. Results: The vaccinated group had higher scores for all factors related to COVID-19 blues (F = 19.147; p < .05; partial η² = .046) and government policy (market responsiveness: F = 5.669, p < .05, partial η² = .014; policy performance: F = 6.997, p < .05, partial η² = .017; policy satisfaction: F = 7.647, p < .05, partial η² = .019), apart from the intention to participate in sports (F = .014, p > .05, partial η² = .000); these results demonstrate that people with COVID-19 blues and relatively high confidence in government quarantine policies were more likely to be vaccinated. In addition, all participants gave sports-participation intention the highest rating, regardless of their vaccination status; this reflects the current situation, in which individual activities are limited. Conclusions: This study analyzed the mental health of vaccinated and unvaccinated groups in Korean adult men, their perceptions of government policies, and their willingness to engage in physical activity. The findings are meaningful and highlight useful directions for future research. This study provides evidence which can help alleviate the mental damage caused by government quarantine policies and enable a better understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results of this study provide important data for understanding the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background and objectiveThe purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between health behavior intentions and actual health behaviors by applying the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to Korean male university students. Material and methodsThe participants of this study were students at Kyung Hee University Global Campus in Yongin-si, Gyeonggi-do, the Republic of Korea. The students of this university are high-achieving, motivated students, and the school was ranked within the top 50 Asia-Pacific universities in 2019 as per an assess-ment carried out by “Times Higher Education,” a university assessment organization in United Kingdom. Questionnaires were distributed to 278 male students from Kyung Hee University in January of 2019. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was conducted to predict health behavior intentions and actual health behaviors in this population. Statistical significance was set at p<0.05. ResultsResults show that attitudes toward health in Korean male university students was correlated with their health behavior intentions (β=0.463, p=0.005). In addition, subjective norms about health in Korean male university students did not significantly affect health behavior intentions (β=0.073, p=0.619). Perceived behavior control regarding health in the participants was correlated with health behavior intentions (β=0.542, p<0.001) and actual health behaviors (β=0.745, p<0.001). Health behavior inten-tions in Korean male university students did not significantly affect actual health behaviors (β=0.151, p=0.108). ConclusionTPB provides an advantageous theoretical model to predict health behavior intentions and actual health behaviors in Korean male university students. Physical activity and classes related to health education may increase the impact of perceived behavior controls. Such classes should be provid-ed to effectively improve health behavior intentions and actual health behaviors of Korean male university students.