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Pilates exercises have been shown beneficial impact on physical, physiological, and mental characteristics of human beings. In this paper, Z-number based fuzzy approach is applied for modeling the effect of Pilates exercises on motivation, attention, anxiety, and educational achievement. The measuring of psychological parameters is performed using internationally recognized instruments: Academic Motivation Scale (AMS), Test of Attention (D2 Test), and Spielberger's Anxiety Test completed by students. The GPA of students was used as the measure of educational achievement. Application of Z-information modeling allows us to increase precision and reliability of data processing results in the presence of uncertainty of input data created from completed questionnaires. The basic steps of Z-number based modeling with numerical solutions are presented.

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused mental and psychological health problems worldwide. The current study assessed the prevalence of mental health issues among university students during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Mental Health Problem Scale (MHPQ) is a 35-item scale including five subscales—anxiety, depression, stress, OCD, and sleep disorders. In this study, the Kurdish version of the MHPQ was designed and developed to assess the mental health of Iraqi students. This version was established in a cross-sectional study at three public and private universities in Iraqi Kurdistan. A sample of 1504 university students was included who provided their responses via a Google Form questionnaire. The reliability of the scale was determined by measuring the Cronbach’s alpha and item–total correlations. The Cronbach’s alpha internal consistency coefficients of mental health were calculated on a factor basis. The Cronbach’s alpha values were determined to be 0.735 for “anxiety”, 0.780 for “depression”, 0.731 for “stress”, 0.707 for “OCD” and 0.731 for “sleep disorder”. As a result, the psychometric results show that the Mental Health Scale can be used as a valid and reliable assessment tool. According to the findings of the study, the COVID-19 pandemic has increased mental health problems among people worldwide, particularly university students. This research was limited to select participants and universities of Sulaimani Governorate of Iraq; therefore, it is highly recommended that future studies include more students and universities from the Iraqi Kurdistan region. Finally, it is recommended that the Ministry of Higher Education and universities review the university programs and develop the quality of study to reduce mental health problems among university students. The findings of this research show that there were differences between the mental health of the study’s male and female participants. The analysis revealed a statistically significant relationship between gender and OCD scores (p = 0.05).

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