Attitudes of Junior National Team Athletes towards Opponents: Ideology/Morals

Abstract

Competitions between countries occur in every field, from science to industry. This competition is inevitable in the field of sports, which is the greatest feature of publicity in countries, one of the tools of getting political advantage and the greatest focus of global capital. This competition, which is seen in the fields of sport, sometimes becomes extreme and situations arise which are far from reflecting the nature of sports. Especially the efforts of athletes to represent their countries in the best way sometimes cause them to behave inappropriately to their opponents. Thus, the purpose of this study is to find out whether athletes’ being on the national team has any effects on their moral structure and to find out whether the attitudes they show to their opponent during competition are ideological or moral. Phenomenologic design was used in the study which was prepared with qualitative research method. The sample group of the study consists of 10 athletes in the junior national team who were determined with maximum variation sampling method. Individual interviews of an average of 10-12 minutes were conducted with the athletes within the context of semi-structured interview technique. The participants were informed that the interviews would be voice recorded and their expressions would later be converted into text to avoid data loss; the interviews were recorded after the necessary permissions were taken. Descriptive and content analysis method were used to analyze the expressions converted into text. Analysis results showed that the athletes stated that being on the national team had positive effects on moral structure due to motivating factors such as representing one’s country and being role models and that they were led by their moral structure while competing with their opponents.