Abstract:

The aim of the present research was to evaluate self-esteem of the children and adolescents in terms of their participation in sports by comparing them to the sedentary peers. “Piers-Harris Children’s Self-Concept Scale” was utilized in order to determine the self-esteem levels of the participants. The sample of the research was consisted of 336 primary school students in total; 109 boy players and 74 girl players who participated in Turkiye U-12 badminton championship of primary schools and 85 sedentary boy students and 68 sedentary girl students determined with random sampling method from two primary schools from Antakya city center. SPSS 14.0 package program was used for the data evaluation. The data were analyzed with the analysis of variance to explain whether there is a difference between two groups or more, Post Hoc Tukey test and Kruskall Wallis Variance Analysis in the ANOVA model, t-test and Mann Whitney U test for paired comparisons, Pearson Tests for correlation comparisons and additionally regression analysis for the comparisons of the independent factors affecting self esteem. As a result, mean scores of the self-esteem of the participants were found to be high in the general sense. Besides, being a sports-player increased significantly scores of the self-esteem. It was found out according to total mean scores of self esteem that all the participants had a high self concept; yet, players did have a higher self concept than sedentary participants. α value for the whole scale was found to be as .87. It was seen that participants had higher means in terms of happiness subscale M=1, 5128 and behavior subscale M=1, 6040 . However, mean scores of physical appearance M=1, 2774 and intellectual / school success M=1, 2594 were found to be lower compared to the mean scores of happiness, anxiety and behavior subscales. According to the correlation among subscales of the Piers-Harris Children’s Self-Concept Scale and to the correlation between the same subscales and the socio demographic variables; anxiety p

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