Three wave cross-lagged associations between traditional Chinese ethnic sports adherence and anxiety symptoms: parallel mediating roles of emotion regulation difficulties and perceived stress.

BACKGROUND: Anxiety symptoms are common among college students. This study examined whether adherence to traditional Chinese ethnic sports was longitudinally associated with anxiety symptoms and whether emotion regulation difficulties and perceived stress served as parallel mediators. METHODS: A three-wave longitudinal survey was conducted among 546 college students from two universities in Tianjin, China. Adherence to traditional Chinese ethnic sports, emotion regulation difficulties, perceived stress, and anxiety symptoms were measured at all three waves. Reliability analysis, common method bias testing, longitudinal measurement invariance, cross-lagged panel modeling, and longitudinal parallel mediation analysis were performed. RESULTS: All scales showed good internal consistency across waves. The cross-lagged model indicated significant autoregressive effects for all variables. Higher adherence was prospectively associated with lower subsequent emotion regulation difficulties and perceived stress, whereas higher levels of both mediators were prospectively associated with higher later anxiety symptoms. The longitudinal parallel mediation model showed good fit, χ2(48) = 71.387, CFI = 0.997, TLI = 0.995, RMSEA = 0.030, and SRMR = 0.017. Bootstrap results supported significant but modest indirect associations through emotion regulation difficulties and perceived stress. CONCLUSION: Adherence to traditional Chinese ethnic sports was prospectively associated with lower anxiety symptoms through two modest indirect pathways involving lower emotion regulation difficulties and perceived stress. These observational findings highlight the potential relevance of multidimensional adherence quality for university mental health promotion but do not establish causal effects.