When fitness testing becomes personal: achievement emotions and participation orientations in compulsory university physical education

Fitness testing can support learning when pedagogically embedded, but public, graded enactment can expose students' bodies to comparison and judgement. Prior research documents negative experiences but does not explain why similar instances of low performance are interpreted as repairable, personally diminishing, or procedurally unfair. Guided by control-value theory and informed by attribution and self-conscious emotion research, this cross-sectional qualitative critical-incident study examined accounts from 30 undergraduates at three public universities in one western Chinese city. Mandarin semi-structured interviews were analyzed through reflexive thematic analysis and a structured whole-dataset case summary. Fourteen focal incidents were primarily task-focused and repairable, 10 were person- or identity-directed, five were procedure-focused, and one was retained as a boundary case; these counts describe this sample rather than population prevalence. In participants' accounts, residual control, specific attributions, actionable feedback, and retesting accompanied anxiety and preparation. Public identity-laden commentary was described alongside shame, embarrassment, or loss of face and reported concealment, whereas opaque or inflexible procedures accompanied frustration and resistance. These associations were not deterministic: public performance could remain task-focused, and lower-visibility activity could preserve participation. Participants related incident meanings to self-reported post-event actions and anticipated participation; neither was observed or verified longitudinally. The study offers an incident-level account without making causal claims.