Comparison of Happiness, Self-Esteem and Anxiety among Schoolchildren with and without School Sporting Olympiad Design

Exercise and physical activity remains one of the very important parts of the education system. The purpose of the present study was to compare the happiness, self-esteem and anxiety of schoolchildren participating in and those not participating in the design of an interdisciplinary sports Olympiad. The research method is causal-comparative. The population of the study consisted of second year 2013-2014 female students from Arak. Multi-stage cluster sampling technique was employed to select 155 each for the participating and non-participating students. The instruments were Oxford Happiness Inventory, Catholic Anxiety Inventory, Cooper Smith Self-Esteem Questionnaire. the data was analyzed using MANOVA based on SPSS version 22software. Findings showed that happiness and self-esteem of students of schools participating in the Olympiad sports program were 95% higher than those who did not participate in the project, but there was no significant difference between the two groups' anxiety. Also, the results showed that school students who run the sport Olympiad within the school had higher happiness and higher self-esteem than students who did not run the school. Therefore, it is recommended to improve vitality, happiness, and self-esteem of the students through increasing their inclusion in exercise and physical activity, this project be implemented in all schools.