Investigation of mobbing behaviors against referees in Turkish handball leagues

The aim of this study is to examine mobbing behaviors towards referees working in Turkish handball leagues. The universe of the research consists of the classification referees who are actively involved in the Turkish Handball Federation in the 2020-2021 season. The sample consists of a total of 148 classification referees, 128 male and 20 female, who were invited to the 2020-2021 Season Referee Training Seminar by the Turkish Handball Federation. As a data collection tool in the study, the personal information form prepared by the researcher in the first part, which includes socio-demographic variables such as age, gender, marital status, education level, refereeing year, refereeing classification, income level and occupation, was used. In the second part, "Mobbing Scale for Indoor Sports Referees" was used. This scale consists of 31 items, shows a single component structure and consists of a 5-point Likert type. In the third part, there are 13 items regarding the referees stating that they have been subjected to mobbing within a season or 6 months. The Cronbach's Alpha internal consistency coefficient of the scale used in the study was found to be 0.89. This value showed that the Mobbing Scale used was a highly reliable scale. The data obtained were analyzed with the SPSS (Statistical Package for The Social Sciences) 22.0 program. Since the differences between the dependent and independent variables were not suitable for the normal distribution of the data, the Mann Whitney U test was used for the two-category variables and the Kruskal Wallis H test was used for the comparison of more than two independent variables. If the Kruskal Wallis H test was significant, the Mann Whitney U test was used after the procedure. Statistical evaluations were compared at 95% confidence level and p<0.05 significance level, and the results were explained. As a result of the analysis, a significant difference was determined between the mobbing scale scores of the handball referees participating in the research and the gender and age variables. It has been observed that the mean line score of male handball referees (79.17) is higher than the mean line score of female participants (44.60), and the difference stems from this. When the Mobbing Scale scores of the age groups were examined, it was determined that there were significant differences. On the other hand; No significant difference was found between the Mobbing Scale scores and the variables of marital status, education level, refereeing time and refereeing classification. In conclusion; In this study, it was concluded that while mobbing levels of handball referees differed significantly according to gender and age, there was no significant difference in terms of marital status, education level, refereeing time and refereeing classifications. Keywords: Handball, Mobbing, Referee