Rock Climbing’s Effect on Mental Health
fall into the themes of emotional, physical, and external. If the written responses are categorized
based on whether or not they include a word associated with one of the themes. Words
categorized into the emotional theme are as follows: great, happy, awe, adrenaline, nice, good,
awesome, and fun. The physical theme included responses with tired, hurt, pain, sore, strength,
energy, body, or physical. Responses in the external theme included stress, netflix, sleep, work,
busy, life, and outside.
To understand how the themes change over time, I will use the VADER sentiment
analysis tool. VADER assigns a number -1 to 1 to each response based on word choice and order
of words (“Resources and Dataset Descriptions”). All words are given a polarity and intensity by
people before they’re added to VADER’s dictionary. When interpreting the sentiment for a
sentence, individual words are valued then averaged. For example, “My hands hurt
unfortunately” is given a score of -0.70 and “I felt pretty good/excited before the session” is
given a score of 0.49.
Understanding how the theme sentiments change will give me insight into the results
from the WHO-5. If the emotional or physical sentiment changes, then it would be a result of the
sessions. If external sentiment changes, then I would know if the WHO-5 score was influenced
by other factors outside of the bouldering sessions.
Results
After participating in the bouldering sessions, I was able to analyze five participants’
data. Although I had eight participants throughout the course of the study, three of those
participants did not complete all three sessions, so I decided to exclude their data. If their
responses were kept, some sessions’ sentiments would be influenced by the participant’s data,
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Rock Climbing’s Effect on Mental Health
but other sentiments wouldn’t be. This would make it harder to see how participants’ responses
changed as a result of the climbing intervention.
Participants were labeled one through five. Session 0 refers to their survey answers
before the climbing sessions and sessions one through three are the participants’ answers after
each session.
Achievement Results
All five participants were high school seniors.
Among the five participants who were able to complete all sessions, their average
unweighted GPA was 3.968 with a high of 4.0 and low of 3.86. All participants met the
achievement specification for GPA with the low GPA being much higher than the cutoff of 3.5.
Below are the GPA statistics of the graduating class of 161 students two years prior to this study:
25 students earned 4.0, 85 earned 3.5 – 3.99. 68% of students had a GPA higher than 3.5,
however all students participating in my study had a GPA higher than 3.5.
The average number of AP classes the participants were taking was 6.2 with a high of 11
and low of 3. This number included classes students were challenging. When students challenge
an AP class, they take the AP test without taking the class over the school year. All students met
the criteria to be considered a high-achieving student by taking 3 or more AP courses. This
aligns with the general senior curriculum because seniors are required to take AP Literature and
Composition, AP Calculus BC, and many students take another AP class for foreign language,
computer science, or physical science.
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Rock Climbing’s Effect on Mental Health
All participants plan to earn at least a bachelor’s degree at a private school or one of the
University of California schools. The majority of seniors enroll in four-year universities with
about an eighth of students attending community colleges.
Participants 1 and 5 never climbed before the study, participants 2 and 3 climbed a few
times, and participant 4 climbs regularly.
WHO-5 Quantitative Data
articipant
P
Number
1
2
3
4
5 Average
Median
0
14
18
24
25
15
19.20
18
1
13
18
25
26
16
19.60
18
2
16
16
22
26
26
21.20
22
3
16
22
23
25
25
22.20
23
ifference
D
Between
Start and
End Scores
2
4
-1
0
10
3.00
5
ession
S
Number
Figure 1: Participants’ Wellness Scores Each Session
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Rock Climbing’s Effect on Mental Health
Figure 2: Bar Graph of Participants’ Wellness Scores
Figure 3: Bar Graph of Average and Median Wellness Scores
Three of the five participants’ scores increased throughout the sessions showing that the
climbing sessions may be improving their mental health. The average score went up three points
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Rock Climbing’s Effect on Mental Health
and the median score improved by five points. However, participant 3’s score decreased by one
point and participant 4’s score stayed the same after finishing all the sessions.
Thematic Sentiments
Figure 4: Average Free Response Sentiment Over Each Session
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Rock Climbing’s Effect on Mental Health
Figure 5: Scatter Chart of Response Sentiments
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Rock Climbing’s Effect on Mental Health
Figure 6: Average Thematic Sentiment Over Each Session
Overall sentiment was very high at the start because many participants reported initial
excitement about climbing. The emotional score decreased on session 3 due to one negative
score reporting annoyance at not being able to finish a climb. Physical sentiment started low
because participants noted that their hands hurt. However, understanding they were getting
stronger through soreness, that sentiment improved. The themes that relate to the climbing
sessions were generally positive, so it would make sense for the wellness scores to increase.
External sentiment was positive throughout, so there should be no reason that wellness scores
decreased due to factors outside of the climbing sessions.
Sentiment began at 0.292, peaked at 0.568, and ended at 0.158. It is important to note that
the highest average sentiment during a session was when there were no negative responses given.
This means that sentiment is heavily influenced by each data point because there are few
responses that the sentiments are based off of.
Discussion NEEDS MORE SOURCES
The original question was “To what extent does indoor bouldering improve the mental
health of high-achieving high school students?” and my hypothesis was that participants’ mental
health will improve because climbing releases endorphins like other exercises, provides an
encouraging community, and gives a sense of accomplishment and progression. The overall
increase in wellness scores throughout the bouldering sessions means that the climbing sessions
did have a positive effect on the participants’ mental health, although there are some nuances to
how beneficial the climbing sessions were.
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