Relative associations of physical activity, social support, and self-control with resilience among vocational college students: a multisite cross-sectional study.

INTRODUCTION: Vocational college students face substantial academic, occupational, and social transition demands, yet the relative importance of modifiable behavioral and psychosocial resources associated with resilience remains unclear. METHODS: This multisite cross-sectional study examined physical activity, social support, self-control, and resilience among 2,251 students recruited by convenience sampling from eight vocational colleges in Jiangsu and Henan Provinces, China. All constructs were assessed using self-report measures. Spearman correlations and covariate-adjusted linear regression were used to compare bivariate and independent associations. Exploratory parallel indirect-association models statistically decomposed the cross-sectional physical activity-resilience association through social support and self-control. Complementary out-of-sample predictive benchmarking compared Ridge regression with gradient boosting, random forest, and support vector regression using repeated nested cross-validation. A personal-resilience outcome was examined as a construct-overlap sensitivity analysis. RESULTS: Social support showed the strongest adjusted association with resilience (standardized β = 0.587, 95% CI [0.553, 0.621]), followed by self-control (β = 0.344, 95% CI [0.312, 0.376]) and physical activity (β = 0.047, 95% CI [0.018, 0.076]). Positive indirect associations were observed through social support (0.0725, 95% CI [0.0431, 0.1009]) and self-control (0.0653, 95% CI [0.0486, 0.0831]). Ridge regression achieved the numerically highest mean held-out R 2 (0.679), but none of the nonlinear models showed statistically supported improvement beyond the linear benchmark; ordinary least-squares sensitivity analysis produced nearly identical performance (R 2 = 0.678). The broad pattern remained similar when personal resilience was used. DISCUSSION: In this sample, social support and self-control were substantially stronger independent correlates of resilience than physical activity, while additional nonlinear model complexity offered little out-of-sample predictive gain.