Investigation of women's participation in sports in terms of health, belief and physical variables

The aim of this study is to review the factors affecting the sports participation of women aged 15-18 who are continuing their high school education. The universe of the study consists of 500 female students from Edremit Anatolian High School, Edremit Religious Vocational High School, Turk Telekom Science High School, Vestel Girls' Vocational School and School of Fine Arts in Edremit, Ipekyolu and Tusba counties of Van. The survey form prepared for the study (Appendix-1) was limited to 41 questions and presented to academic members from sports, theology and statistics fields. The surveys aimed to define the factors such as participants' family structures, whether their family members attend sports activities or not, whether they perform religious services assumed a religious duty by Islam, and whether their faiths affect the participation of sports activities. In the study, the relation (Table 13) between the answers to the statement of "Doing sports does not prevent one from worshipping" according to the school types are above 50% in all schools except for Edremit Science High School as Strongly Agree. According to school types, the responses to statement of "Sports attire is not suitable for my faith" are reviewed (Table 15) and it is seen that Strongly agree and Strongly Disagree responses are found correct by 57.1% and Agree and Disagree are chosen by 31,3%. The relation between the statement of "One should seek help from religious faith in solving everyday problems" and the statement of "Doing sports does not prevent one from worshipping" has been found to have statistically significant difference with p= 0.000.The relation between the statement of "One should seek help from religious faith in solving everyday problems" and the statement of "Sports attire is not suitable for my faith" has been found to have statistically significant difference with p= 0.000.The relation between the statement of "One should seek help from religious faith in solving everyday problems" and the statement of "Living as per one's religious faith is not an obstacle for doing sports" has been found to have statistically significant difference with p=0.000. As conclusion, it can be stated that the group of this study (female high school students between the ages of 15-18) have a general sense of religious sensitivity, however lack the adequate level of knowledge in terms of the perspective of Islam towards sports activities.