Background: Nursing students in many countries have been reported to experience high levels of stress and psychological distress. Health habits could potentially mediate the association between co** styles and psychological status. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the mediation effect of health habits in the relationship between stress co** styles and psychological distress in Japanese nursing students.
Methods: A total of 181 nursing students completed anonymous self-reported questionnaires comprised of the General Health Questionnaire-12 (GHQ-12), the Brief Co** Orientation questionnaire, and an additional questionnaire on health behavior. A mediation analysis using path analysis with bootstrap** was used for data analysis.
Results: Multivariate linear regression analysis showed that psychological distress was significantly and positively associated with “Avoidance co**” (β = 0.39,
p < 0.001), and was negatively associated with “Active co**” (β = −0.30,
p < 0.001), “exercise habit” (β = −0.25,
p = 0.001), and “slee**” (β = −0.24,
p = 0.002). In the path model, “Active co**” and “Avoidance co**” had significant or marginally significant associations with “exercise habits” (active: β = 0.19,
p = 0.008, avoidance: β = −0.12,
p = 0.088), and psychological distress (active: β = −0.25,
p < 0.001, avoidance: β = 0.363,
p < 0.001). However, these co** style variables did not have a significant association with “sleep”. In general, the size of the correlations was below 0.4.
Conclusions: Exercise habits mediated the relationship between co** styles and psychological distress to a greater extent than sleep. The present study suggests the possibility that complex interactions between health habits and co** styles may influence the psychological status of nursing students.
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