Resilience, Physical Activity, and Contextual Influences on Youth Happiness During Summer: Insights from Ecological Momentary Assessment

Abstract

Community Summary: What helps teens feel happy from one moment to the next during the summer? For one week in summer 2025, 41 Central Texas students ages 11 to 15 answered short phone surveys six times a day about how they felt, how connected they felt to the people around them, and how safe they felt, while an activity tracker recorded their movement. Teens answered about 83% of the surveys we sent. Being active in the 10 minutes before a survey was not linked with feeling happier in that moment. The setting mattered more: teens reported more happiness at times when they felt safer and more connected to others than usual. Teens with higher resilience (the ability to bounce back from hard times) also tended to be happier overall. Safe places and good company seem to matter a great deal for how teens feel during the summer.

Abstract

Objective: Resilience is positively associated with positive affect in college students, and physical activity (PA) predicts positive affect in preschoolers. The present study examined whether resilience moderates the relationship between PA and positive affect (happiness) in adolescents. We also explored how contextual factors, social bonding and perceived safety, related to changes in happiness. We hypothesized that resilience would increase the size of the association between PA and affect.

Methods: Data was collected in summer from 41 youth (ages 11–15) in Central Texas. Measures included the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC 10) administered at baseline, affect assessed six times a day for seven days via ecological momentary assessment (EMA), and PA using wrist-worn Actigraph LEAP over a 7-day period. Multilevel modeling (EMA prompts nested within participants) examined the momentary relationships among PA, positive affect, resilience, and contextual factors (social bonding and perceived safety).

Results: PA in the previous 10 minutes was not significantly associated with momentary affect (β=0.02, p=.33), and critically, resilience did not moderate this relationship (interaction β=-0.004, p=.25). However, resilience showed a significant direct effect on happiness, with more resilient youth reporting higher overall happiness levels (β=0.03, p=.04). Additionally, contextual factors showed within-person effects as momentary social bonding (β=0.06, p<.001) and perceived safety (β=0.18, p<.001) were both significantly associated with higher momentary happiness. At the between-person level, youth who generally experienced higher safety also reported significantly elevated happiness (β=0.50, p<.001).

Conclusions: Findings suggest that while resilient youth experience higher average happiness, resilience does not moderate the immediate mood effects of short-term PA, with social and contextual factors emerging as stronger predictors of momentary affect than recent PA. Specifically, perceptions of safety and social bonding demonstrated consistent effects, underscoring the central role of contextual factors and suggesting that fostering environmental and social supports as potential pathways for promoting youth happiness.

Veronika Croan

PhD Student - Colorado State University

Veronika is currently a PhD student in the Clinical Psychology Program at Colorado State University under the mentorship of Dr. Reagan Miller-Chagnon.

Jeong-Hui Park

Assistant Professor University of Oklahoma

Jeong-Hui Park, PhD, is a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Health and Exercise Science at the University of Oklahoma, following her doctoral training at Texas A&M University and postdoctoral research at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.