Investigation of the relationship between the recreational benefit perceptions and happiness levels of faculty of education students

In this study, it was aimed to examine the recreational benefit perceptions and happiness levels of students studying at Necmettin Erbakan University Faculty of Education. This study, which separates the research independently, was carried out by considering quantitative methods. The survey design was used in this method and the effect of recreation benefit perceptions on happiness levels was determined with the survey design. The study group of the research consisted of students studying at Necmettin Erbakan University Faculty of Education. As the data collection tool used in the study, in the first part, the Recreation Benefit Scale developed by Ho (2008) and validated and reliably validated by Akgül, Karaküçük and Ertüzün (2018) in order to determine students' perceptions of recreation benefits; In the second part, the 'Happiness Oxford Scale' developed by Hills and Argyle (2002), validity and reliability study by Doğan and Çötok (2011) to evaluate the happiness levels of individuals and personal information form. As personal information of the participants, there are questions about age, gender, income level, grade point average. Whether the data had a normal distribution was determined according to the Kolmogorov Smirnov test and it was seen that the p value was less than 0.05 and it was decided to apply nonparametric tests in the analysis. Then, in order to measure the relationship between dependent and independent variables, Spearman correlation test, Mann Whitney U test for binary variables and Kruskal Wallis H test for more than two variables were applied. In addition, frequency analysis, reliability analysis and descriptive statistics are included. The analysis was made according to 95% confidence interval. In the research findings, it is seen that the physical, psychological and social sub-dimensions and total scores of the recreation benefit scale are low, while the happiness scale score is at a medium level. It was determined that there was a statistically significant difference in the physical benefit, social benefit and recreation benefit scale total scores, except for the age of the participants and the recreation benefit scale psychological sub-dimension and happiness total score, there was a statistically significant difference only in the recreation benefit scale psychological sub-dimension score as a result of the Kruskal Wallis H test according to the grade variable, and there was a statistically significant difference in both the recreation benefit scale total score and all sub-dimensions in the grade point average variable. In conclusion; As a result of the correlation analysis between happiness and recreational benefit, there is no significant relationship between happiness and physical benefit, there is a significant and weakly negative relationship between happiness and psychological benefit, there was no significant relationship between happiness and social benefit, there was a significant and weak negative relationship between happiness and recreational benefit. Keywords: Recreation, Recreational Benefit, Happiness