In the context of COVID-19, people face conditions of great stress and are susceptible to negative emotions such as worry, fear, and doubt. Therefore, the focus of epidemic prevention should be on mental health as well as physical health. It is important to pay attention to people's mental health while mitigating and controlling the epidemic. As an intervention to improve mental health, exercise behavior has attracted increasing attention from scholars due to its convenience and low cost. Therefore, the goal of this paper was to investigate the differences between characteristics related to linguistic expression and mental health indicators among different groups of Weibo users by constructing a Weibo exercise behavior user lexicon to explore the influence of exercise behavior on mental health. This study developed a user dictionary of exercise behavior, classified Sina Weibo users' exercise behavior, and established relevant systems to uncover the expressive characteristics of psychological vocabulary and behavioral vocabulary to explore the differences in expressive features related to psychological and behavioral vocabulary and mental health indicators among users who engage in different forms of exercise behavior during the period of COVID-19. As a result of an analysis of variance (ANOVA) conducted during the COVID-19 epidemic, (1) based on the constructed user lexicon of motion behavior in Weibo, the classification program exhibited good performance; (2) there were significant differences in the expressions of some lexical features among users who exhibited different motor behaviors; and (3) both nonphysical exercise and physical exercise behavior had positive relationships with some mental health indicators, but the mechanism associated with nonphysical exercise requires further exploration. This study provides a scientific online evaluation methodology and support for research concerning exercise and mental health during the COVID-19 epidemic.

Background Information technology has become an irreplaceable part of people’s lives, and the interaction between information technology and self-identity has produced a new type of information technology (IT) identity. However, there is no measurement tool for this concept in China. The main aim of the study was to revise Carter’s IT Identity Scale in the context of Chinese cultural background and to determine whether the Chinese version is congruent with the English version. Methods In this study, we revised the scale on the basis of the information technology identity scale developed by Carter, translated the scale according to the Chinese cultural environment. Our sample size was 408, and all of them were junior middle school students. After testing this sample, we carried out item analysis, validity analysis, and reliability analysis. Results (1) The correlation coefficients between each item and the total score were significant (0.775–0.885). (2) The three-factor structure (relatedness, dependence, emotional energy) of the Chinese version of the IT identity scale was consistent with the original scale. The values of the factor loadings of each item in the three factors of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were all greater than 0.700, and the model fit indexes (CFI, NFI, NNFI, TLI and IFI) were all greater than 0.900, indicating a good model fit. (3) Average variance extraction (AVE), composite reliability (CR), Pearson correlation, and the square root of AVE indicated good convergence and discriminant validity. (4) The ɑ coefficients and CR of the three dimensions (ie, relatedness, dependence, emotional energy) were all greater than 0.800, and the split coefficients were all greater than 0.800, indicating high reliability. Conclusion The Chinese version of the information technology identity scale presented satisfactory psychometric properties and shared many similarities with the original version. Ultimately, we revised an information technology identity scale suitable for Chinese culture.