2022 Volume 24 Issue 2 Pages 87-98
Objective: The present study assessed changes in the daily steps of university students according to sex and lifestyles during the novel coronavirus disease （COVID-19） pandemic.
Methods: The subjects were 85 male and 109 female university students in their third and fourth year of study. The number of daily steps was assessed by the use of a smartphone software application. The number of daily steps was collected for 10 diff erent periods from December 2019, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan, to October 2020, during the hybrid learning period. A two-way analysis of variance adjusted for location and the frequency that individuals carried their smartphones was conducted to examine changes in the number of steps across sex and lifestyles (exercise habits and part-time job status, and main learning route during the hybrid learning period). When a main eff ect of time was found, a one-way analysis of variance was conducted for each group.
Results: In this study, the pattern of change in the daily steps during the COVID-19 pandemic did not diff er according to sex and lifestyle. There was a diff erence in the number of daily steps by sex and exercise habit. The number of daily steps was the lowest compared to before the COVID-19 outbreak when the declaration of the state of emergency, with a decrease of 48.3% in males and 54.9% in females. Although the number of daily steps tended to increase from the remote learning period, the number of daily steps did not recover to the value observed before the pandemic onset, even during the hybrid learning period.
Conclusion: During the novel infectious disease epidemic, various measures are therefore needed to promote an improvement in the decreased level of physical activity regardless of sex and lifestyle among university students.
