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Abstract

Purpose: to evaluate the scientific evidence on the effects of physical exercise on the academic performance of university students, through a systematic review.

Methods: Eleven hundred and fifty-three studies emerged from this search, based on the following selection criteria: articles published in the last 5 years, original studies of different types: experimental at any level, correlational, analytical, and observational, where any type of physical exercise is applied, in undergraduate university students, of any sex and university career. The review was finally performed with only 11 studies. Search for appropriate manuscripts was based on the following descriptive terms: "Exercise" AND "Academic Performance" AND "University Students" in English and Spanish. The search was conducted in the following databases: Web of Science (Core Collection), Scopus, and Pubmed. Our search strategy followed the PRISMA protocol. The Newcastle-Ottawa scale was used to assess the methodological quality and risk of bias of the studies.

Results: 1153 studies were found and the systematic review was finally performed with 11 selected studies. Only 2 were conducted in Europe, 6 in Asia and 3 in America. The overall quality and level of bias could be considered as moderately positive with an average of 6.7 out of 9 stars. 7 were cross-sectional descriptive (64 % of the total), 2 correlational (18 %), 1 cross-sectional with correlational and linear regression analyses (9 %) and 1 quasi-experimental study (9 %). In all 11 the sampling was non-probabilistic. The samples ranged from 58 to 2324 students. The overall results of the correlations of some studies between physical exercise and academic performance, on average, there was a moderately significant and directly proportional relationship between both variables (r= 0.348; p= 0.001).

Discussion: physical exercise has a moderate positive effect on the academic performance of university students at the international level.

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