130. The role of pickleball in enhancing the self-efficacy and psychological resilience of college students

Abstract Background During the process of exercise, individuals can gain a sense of achievement and control, thereby enhancing their self-efficacy. Pickleball, as a non-verbal social medium, provides college students with a low-threshold and highly interactive communication scenario. Between hitting the ball back and forth, individuals need to focus on the present and react quickly. This immediate feedback mechanism helps cultivate psychological resilience. To explore the impact of this sport on the psychological state of college students, a pickleball exercise intervention experiment was constructed to conduct a pre-test and post-test comparison of students’ self-efficacy and psychological resilience levels. Methods A total of 118 students from two natural science classes in the first year of college were selected as the research subjects and divided into the experimental group and the control group. Among them, 59 students in the experimental group participated in an 8-week pickleball intervention course, twice a week, each session lasting 60 minutes. The content covered basic technical training, two-person cooperation and actual combat. However, the 59 people in the control group maintained their original physical education course arrangements and did not participate in pickleball training. The study evaluated the two groups of students before and after the intervention using the General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSES) and the Resilience Scale (RS-14). GSES uses a Likert 4-point scoring system, with a total score ranging from 10 to 40 points. The higher the score, the stronger the sense of self-efficacy. RS-14 is scored on a 5-point Likert scale, with a total score range of 14 to 70 points, reflecting an individual’s adaptability and recovery ability when facing pressure. The experiment lasted for two months. During the intervention period, the attendance, course participation and emotional state of the two groups of students were recorded synchronously. Results Before the experiment was conducted, there was no significant difference in the levels of self-efficacy and psychological resilience between the two groups of students (p<.05). One month after the experiment was carried out, the average GSES score of the students in the experimental group increased from 26.3 in the pre-test to 33.7, and the RS-14 score rose from 48.5 to 60.2, both of which were significantly higher than those of the control group (p<.05). Two months after the experiment was carried out, the average score of GSES in the experimental group further increased to 35.1, and the RS-14 score reached 62.8, which was significantly better than the level of the control group in the same period (p<.05). The self-efficacy and psychological resilience of the experimental group were significantly enhanced after participating in the exercise. Discussion Pickleball can effectively enhance college students’ self-efficacy and psychological resilience. This exercise intervention can be applied to the practical links of mental health education courses in colleges and universities, helping students achieve all-round development through the two-way interaction of physical activities and psychological growth. Subsequently, it can be extended to student groups of different grades and majors to further verify the universality and long-term effects of pickleball exercise intervention.