This synthetic dataset contains measures of academic stress, motivation, exercise intention, and exercise behavior. It was generated based on the real data by Zhao and colleagues (2025), who conducted research among 290 middle-school students.
Format
A tibble with 291 observations and 31 variables:
- ID
Participant identifier.
- Grade
School grade, coded 1 = Grade 7, 2 = Grade 8, and 3 = Grade 9.
- Age
Age in years.
- Gender
Gender, coded 1 = male and 2 = female.
- TS1-TS4
Four items measuring teacher pressure (teacher-related academic stress).
- SOS1-SOS4
Four items measuring social pressure or social stress.
- PS1-PS5
Five items measuring parental pressure or parental stress.
- AM1-AM5
Five items measuring autonomous motivation.
- CM1-CM4
Four items measuring controlled motivation.
- BI1-BI3
Three items measuring behavioral intention to engage in physical exercise.
- BH1-BH2
Two items measuring physical exercise behavior.
Source
Zhao, K., Zhao, Y., & Xu, W. (2025). Relationship between middle school students' academic stress and physical exercise behavior from the perspective of Self-Determination Theory: The chained mediation of motivation and intention. PLOS ONE, 20(1), e0316599. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0316599
Details
The dataset contains measures related to Self-Determination Theory (SDT) in the context of academic stress and physical exercise among middle-school students.
The stress measures include teacher pressure (TS), social pressure (SOS), and parental pressure (PS). Motivation is represented by autonomous motivation (AM) and controlled motivation (CM). Exercise-related variables include behavioral intention (BI) and exercise behavior (BH).
Examples
data(zhao_2025)