Examining Winter Sports Awareness Level of University Students Receiving Sports Education

Abstract

The aim of this study is to determine winter sports awareness levels of students educated in the field of sports sciences according to the following independent variables: gender, university, class level, experience in winter sports, family members’ interest in winter sports and monthly family income. The study uses the survey method, and the participants are a total of 562 students attending the School of Physical Education and Sports or the Faculty of Sports Sciences at Kafkas University, Karabük University, Kastamonu University and Samsun 19th May University in 2018-2019 academic year. “Winter Sports Awareness Scale†, which was developed by Eski (2010), was administered to collect the data for the purposes of the study. This 5-point Likert type scale consists of 35 questions and has three dimensions. However, overall awareness levels of the participants were examined in this study by taking the overall score obtained from the scale rather than the scores for each dimension. SPSS 20 program was used for the analysis of the data. Skewness – Kurtosis values were calculated, and independent sample t-test was used for pair-wise comparisons and One-Way ANOVA and Tukey HSD for multiple comparisons. The results of the analysis revealed medium level awareness for winter sports for all the groups. The comparisons of the mean scores for “gender†and “family income†variables revealed no significant differences while significant differences were found for “university†, “experience in winter sports†and “family members’ interest in winter sports†variables. Key Words: Awareness, Sport, Sports Awareness, Winter Sports, University Students