Analysis of Sports and Social Skill Relation in a Non-Sportive Group

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between social skills and sports participation of non-athlete participants. The data of this study were collected by using the Convenience Sampling Method from 197 females (59.3%) and 135 males (40.7%), a total of 332 participants, ranging in age from 17 to 67 years (mean=28.72±9.31 years). When asked about the frequency of engaging in sports, while 43 (13.0%) of the respondents reported regular participation and 117 (53.3%) reported occasional participation, and 112 (33.7%) were non-participants. The participants completed the “A Social Skills Scale” for adults consisting of 80 items, and the Socio-demographic Form. The results showed that the Internal Consistency Coefficient for the scale was 0.93. In order to compare the three groups (regular participants, occasional participants, and non-participants) and other variables in terms of the total score of the scale, the two-way ANOVA test was used. There were significant differences in social skill degrees between three groups which were constituted based on frequency of sports participation, between the genders, and between the two groups that were formed considering where participants spent most of their lives (big cities or small towns). On the other hand, no significant difference was observed between participants’ social skills according to age and socioeconomic variables like marital status, education, occupational and financial status. Findings were discussed in the context of the related literature.