Examining the role of participation in school sports in the relationshipbetween secondary school students' problem-solving skills and cognitive flexibility levels

The purpose of this study was to examine the moderating role of participation in school sports in the relationship between middle school students' problem-solving skills and cognitive flexibility levels. The study group consisted of 993 middle school students, 432 female and 561 male. Data collection tools in the study included a Personal Information Form developed by the researchers, the "Cognitive Flexibility Scale" adapted into Turkish by Çelikkaleli (2014), and the "Problem Solving Inventory" developed by Serin, Bulut-Serin, and Saygılı (2010). SPSS 24.0 software with the PROCESS macro add-on was used to analyze the data. Skewness and kurtosis values were examined to assess the conformity of the data to a normal distribution. An independent samples t-test was used for two-group comparisons, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) for comparisons of more than two groups, and the Pearson correlation test was used to determine the relationships between some variables. According to the research findings, significant differences were found between the scores on the cognitive flexibility and problem-solving scale subscales and some demographic variables. Furthermore, low to moderate significant correlations were found between cognitive flexibility and problem-solving skills. Consequently, participation in a school team was found to moderate the relationship between middle school students' cognitive flexibility and problem-solving skills, and this effect was positive.