Abstract:

The aim of this study is to compare the communication skills of athletes and sedentary students studying at Gazi University Faculty of Sport Sciences. The screening model was utilized to design the study group of the research. In addition, the study group of the research was consisted of a total of 202 students (84 athletes and 118 sedentary) who were selected with utilizing an accessible sampling from Gazi University Faculty of Sport Sciences. The research data was collected with utilizing both personal information form and communication skills scale which was developed by Ersanli and Balci (1998). In addition, the communication skills scale, which consists of 45-items in the 5-likert type, has 3-sub dimensions as mental, emotional and behavioral. The distribution of demographic information of the participants was examined by frequency analysis. The sub-dimensions of the communication skills scale were calculated for each participant. Moreover, the normal distribution of the data was examined with the Kolmogorov Smirnov test and it was found to be conform with the normal distribution. In the analyses, a one-way analysis of variance was utilized to determine whether the sub-dimensions of the communication skills scale differed significantly according to age groups. In addition, t-test was utilized in the independent groups to analyze whether there is a significant difference according to gender and athlete/sedentary groups or not. The analysis of the data was accomplished with utilizing SPSS 25.0 software at the level of 95%. The results of the research show significant differences in mental, emotional and behavioral communication skills according to age ranges (p<0.05). Emotional communication skills sub-dimension differs significantly by gender (p<0.05), while mental and behavioral communication skills differ significantly by gender. Furthermore, the emotional communication skills scores of the sedentary were significantly higher than the athletes while the mental and behavioral communication skills scores of the athletes were significantly higher than the sedentary.

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