the effects of physical activity on self-esteem: a comparative study

Background: exercise is a way to improve self-esteem. objectives: the purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of eight weeks of aerobic exercise on the self-esteem of medical students at zahedan university of medical sciences in iran. patients and methods: this study used a 58-item coopersmith inventory to measure the self-esteem of 84 male students who participated in an exercise program as an intervention. both dependent and independent t-tests, as well as a chi square test, were applied using spss software. results: the results showed that although the self-esteem average score was not significant before the intervention, it increased significantly in the experimental group. in the experimental group, the variation in the meanself-esteem score was 32.36–42.89 before and after the intervention. conclusions: our findings revealed that aerobic exercise increases self-esteem. an improvement in educational, family, social, and general self-esteem scores was seen only in the experimental group.