Abstract: Objective: the purpose of the paper is to investigate the effects of exercise intervention on depressive symptoms of college students in China by Meta analysis. Method: the method adopted is to formulate the inclusion criteria, exclusion criteria and the search strategy of research literatures and to collect all the relevant check experiments of physical exercise intervention on depressive symptoms of college students in China. The collected data are analyzed using Stata12.0. Results:(1)11 studies of 17 controlled group trials are ultimately included with the Jadad score of the included low-quality literature being 0-2 averagely. (2)Meta regression analysis indicates that physical exercise can significantly improve the mild depressive symptoms in Chinese college students, SMD (-1.47, p=0.000 < 0.05), 95%CI (-1.93, -1.02); Physical exercise can improve the students' moderate depression symptoms, SMD (-0.55, p=0.001 < 0.05), 95%CI (-0.86, -0.23). Publication bias analysis: mild depression t=-1.49 p=0.162 > 0.05, showing that the Meta analysis results are stable with high credibility; moderate depression t=0.18, p=0.028 < 0.05, showing that the Meta analysis result is not stable with low credibility. Conclusion: physical exercise intervention can effectively improve the mild and moderate symptoms of depression of college students, but it needs further studies as to whether physical exercise can completely cure depression. This research still needs to be confirmed through large samples and high quality randomized controlled trials because the research literatures included in this system are of low quality.

Key words: physical exercise, college students, depression, clinical trials, Meta analysis