The Effect of University Students' Perceived Social Support Levels on Physical Activity Participation

Abstract

It is clearly seen that interaction affects the level of physical activity like many other behaviors in the social world we live in with others. This study examines the relationship between motivation to participate in physical activities and perceived social support. The sample group of the study consists of 491 students, 389 females and 102 males, whom are chosen from two public university students. They are selected according to convenient sampling method which is one of the non-random sampling method. In the research, The Motivation Scale for Participating in Physical Activity which is developed by Tekkurşun-Demir and Cicioğlu, and Perceived Support Scale that is developed by Yıldırım in 1997 and revised in 2004 were used as a data collection tools. In addition to descriptive statics, which are Regression Analysis and Explanatory Factor Analysis, Independent Sample T Test was also used for two groups depending on the number of variables in the analysis of the data. When the findings were evaluated, it was determined that the perceived social support levels of the research group were above the average and the highest support was determined as friend support while the lowest was teacher support. In physical activity motivations, the highest average is in the sub-dimension of arbitrariness while the lowest average is the individual sub-dimension. It has been retained that gender is a variable that causes significant difference in all sub-dimensions and total scores. The average scores of males are higher compare to females. Findings of correlation analysis examining the relationship between measurement tools show that there are positive low and medium level relationship between perceived social support and motivation to participate in physical activity. Furthermore, as a result of regression analysis, it was demonstrated with the regression model that a unit increase in perceived social support would create an increase of 0,144 on physical activity participation. As a result, perceived social support is an important predictor of participation in physical activity.