The factors affecting faculty of sport sciences students' attitudes towards sports

Abstract

Many young student-athletes living in Turkey prefer Faculties of Sport Sciences in various universities for their academic, sports and vocational career developments. In this process, attitudes towards sports of student-athletes gain importance. In this context, the purpose of the present research is studying the factors affecting the Faculty of Sport Sciences students’ attitudes towards sports. The population consists of all undergraduate students studying at Faculties of Sports Sciences of various universities. The sample group consists of 842 students (Avg. age = 21,49 ±3,18) from each department and each undergraduate level. "Attitude towards Sport Scale (ATSS)" developed by Şentürk and "University Life Scale (ULS)" developed by Aladağ et al. were used as the data collection tools and the scale was applied on electronic environment on participants. The data, which were found reliable (ATSS ?=0,873; ULS ?=0,831), were tested as normal with Kolmogorov – Smirnov test (p>,05), and so were suitable for parametric tests. Accordingly, independent samples t-test and one-way variance analysis were used for comparison analyses and Pearson correlation test was used for correlation analyses. It was found that, freshman students, especially the evening education students of Coaching Education department, had significantly more positive attitudes towards sports. The most prominent finding of the research was that the attitudes towards sports decreased as the grade levels and ages of the students increased. In addition, attitudes towards the sport decrease as the students’ adaptation to the university environment, academic life and social life increased. Supporting these findings with a qualitative study by means of interviewing on the same subject will provide an exploratory study on the decrease in attitude towards the sport as the age increases. © 2019 by authors, all rights reserved.