Comparasion of loneliness levels on visually impaired in different sports branches

In this work, it is aimed both to determine loneliness levels of the visually handicapped athletes in different branches, and to compare loneliness levels of the athletes playing and not playing sports.Totally 340 visually handicapped athletes, consisting of 280 visually handicapped male athletes participating in Goal ball, B1, B2-B3 Futsal, Atletizm and Judo competitions within the 2011-2012 season activity programme of Turkey for the Blind Athletics Championships and 60 visually handicapped athletes who do not take part in any sport branches, include in the research.Personal Information Form was prepared in order to obtain personal data of those visually handicapped ones who participated in the research. UCLA Loneliness Scale was used to determine their loneliness states. These forms were filled out separately for each visually handicapped athletes by being converted to Braille alphabet and through the questions of face to face. Acquired data was evaluated by SSPS program and its significance level was found as (P<0.05)Following the research, no significant difference was found between visual and loneliness levels of visually handicapped individuals. Yet, a significant difference was determined between parents? education levels, family?s behaviors-attitudes, and mother?s occupation and loneliness points.Statistically, a significant difference was determined between sport branches like Goalball: 56.07±8.33 score, Athleticism: 50.35±5.45 score, Futsal: 52.85±6.43 score, Judo:50.58±4.43 score and loneliness points.Moreover, A statistically significant difference was determined between loneliness points (52.46±6.70 score) of those visually handicapped individuals who regularly play sports and loneliness points (54.86±5.46) of those visually handicapped individuals not doing sports.