Examination of digital gaming addiction in contact and non-contact sports

The aim of this research is to examine digital game addiction in contact and non-contact sports athletes. Personal information form and "Digital Game Addiction Scale for Children" developed by Hazar and Hazar (2017) were used to collect the data. The contact sports in this research were determined as basketball, boxing, football, wrestling, handball, judo, karate, taekwondo and non-contact sports were athletics, badminton, cycling, rowing, table tennis, tennis, volleyball, sailing, swimming. The research group consists of total 335 students, 168 girls and 167 boys, who answered the questions completely and correctly out of 515 students who do contact and non-contact sports in Sinop. The Personal Information Form developed by the researcher and the "Digital Game Addiction Scale for Children" developed by Hazar and Hazar (2017) were applied to participants and their responses were analyzed. The data were analyzed with the SPSS 21 package program and first of all, Shapiro-Wilk and Kolmogorov-Smirnov normality tests were used. T-test was used in paired groups and One-Way Analysis of Variance (Anova) Test was used in groups with more than two groups to find the differences between group means. Post Hoc TUKEY test was used to determine in which group the significant difference was in the analyzes where there was a difference between the groups. The significance level for all statistical analyzes was accepted as p<0.05. As a result of the analyzes, significant differences were found in the four sub-factors of the scale: excessive focus and conflict towards digital game playing, development of tolerance and value attributed to the game, delaying individual and social tasks/homework, psychological-physiological reflection of deprivation and immersion in the game. According to these results, it was concluded that the students participating in the study were in the low-risk group. In addition, it was determined that there was a significant difference in all sub-dimensions and total scores of the scale according to the type of game, and it was determined that they preferred mostly to play war and strategy games. Participating to both types of contact-non-contact sports, having their own game console, studying in the seventh grade and in boys were higher digital game addiction levels. In addition, it was determined that digital game addiction increased as age, internet usage time and game playing time. As a result, it is important to keep internet and digital game playing times under control and to minimize digital game addiction by spending more time with sports.