Özet:

The research aims to examine the effect of physical activity on perceived stress, happiness and leisure satisfaction levels of working sedentary individuals who have participated the physical activity program regularly. The research is a quasi-experimental study done by using quantitative research method. Experimental group participants havepracticed regular physical activity program one hour a day, 3 days a week for 8 weeks. Except from the experimental study, in order to determine the emotional states of regular physical activity program participants and nonparticipants, we have used “Perceived Stress”, “Oxford Happiness” and “Leisure Time Satisfaction” scales. The research involves 90 people divided into two groups; “Experiment” (45 people) and “Control” (45 people). The age ranges from 25 to 45 years old. . The groups’ pretest and posttest results have been compared by using “t-Test” and “Two-way Analysis of Variance” tests in a way involving both subdimensions of scales and sub-problems of the research. Besides, the demographic information of the participants has been made available by frequency and percentage analysis. It has been identified that stress and insufficient self-efficacy perception of individuals in the experiment group and attending regular physical activity program has decreased significantly in comparison to the individuals in the control group and not attending the regular physical activity program. Also,happiness perception points of the experiment group have been detected much higher than of the control group. Leisure satisfaction levels of regular physical activity program participants have seemed to increase in all subdimensions compared to individuals in the control group and not attending the regular physical activity program. In conclusion, it can be argued that people with intensive work tempos, evaluating their free time by participating in a regular physical activity program, may cause positive changes in their social and psychological emotional states.

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