The relationship between home-based exercise involvement and wellness of Bachelor of Science in Physical Therapy students of De La Salle Medical and Health Sciences Institute during the COVID-19 - crisis

: As the COVID-19 pandemic forced the students to stay at home mandated by community guidelines, numerous problems prevailed to the wellness of the students. The dimensions of wellness namely: psychological, emotional, social, physical, spiritual, and intellectual are all important factors to determine the wellbeing of a person, however, these are often neglected. Hence, the purpose of this study is to contribute knowledge as to the involvement of home-based exercises and the overall wellness of the DLSMHSI BSPT students during the pandemic. In this descriptive correlational quantitative study, the researchers described the changes in their perceived wellness when participating in a regular exercise routine among these students residing in the Philippines affected by the 2020-2021 quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic. A non-probability convenience sampling was utilized to gather the 137 eligible participants who took part in the online survey using the self-administered survey questionnaire provided through a JotForm link. Data analysis that was utilized in the research used a Point-Biserial Correlation Coefficient andTwo-Way ANOVA. The data showed that the respondents have average perceived wellness; however, results indicated no significant relationship between exercise involvement and overall perceived wellness (p=0.056). Moreover, there is no sufficient evidence that the overall mean wellness between male and female is not equal (p=0.3801) and the independent variable gender does not statistically contribute to the variation of overall mean wellness. Further, there is insufficient evidence that the overall mean wellness differs between involvement and non-involvement in home-based exercises (p=0.668). Lastly, home-based exercise involvement and non-involvement is not equal among BSPT students, meaning the overall mean wellness is not significantly different between the two groups (p=0.159). The results indicated no relationship between exercise involvement and overall perceived wellness of the respondents at the time of pandemic. However, when the significance level is set to 0.10 there is significant correlation between the exercise involvement and the PWS of the respondents