Investigation of the nutritional knowledge levels of athletes interested in winter sports according to various variables

In addition to hereditary characteristics and the training model, nutrition is one of the factors that significantly determine the health and performance of the athlete. This thesis aimed to determine the knowledge levels and nutritional habits of the athletes engaged in winter sports and living in Erzurum province and to evaluate the related factors. While the research universe comprises the athletes who do winter sports in Erzurum, the sample group consists of the athletes who do 202 winter sports, 113 men and 89 women, randomly selected in Erzurum. The questionnaire form was created as a result of the literature review, the "Attitude Scale towards Healthy Eating" questionnaire developed by Demir and Cicioğlu (2019), and the demographic characteristics of the students were obtained with the "personal information form". The data were analyzed in SPSS 26 statistical program. First, frequency analysis was performed, and then skewness and kurtosis values were examined to reveal whether the collected data showed a normal distribution. Parametric test analyzes were used because of the normal distribution of the data as a result of these tests. T-test was applied to the variables of gender and national athlete, and One-Way ANOVA Test was used for the variables of age, duration of sportsmanship, branch, and educational status. In addition, the tukey test was performed to determine which group the difference was from. In the study, the analyzes were carried out at a 95% confidence interval. In the study, as a result of comparing the healthy eating attitude levels of the participants according to age and education level, significant differences were found between the groups in the sub-dimension of knowledge about nutrition (p<0.05). According to the results obtained, it has been determined that the participants in the 22-24 age group have more information about nutrition than the participants in the 16-18 age group, and the participants with a postgraduate education level have more information about nutrition than the participants in high school.