Investigation of motor competence and attention relationship in volleyball and basketball players

This study was conducted to compare the motor competence elements and attention levels of 11-13 years old volleyball and basketball players. The sample group consisted of a total of 201 athletes, 100 basketball players and 101 volleyball players. All of the volleyball group (101 athletes) were girls and all of the basketball group (100 athletes) were boys. Before the measurements, necessary information about the athletes was collected with personal information forms. Afterwards, anthropometric measurements (height, body weight) of the athletes were performed and Body Mass Index (BMI) value was calculated. KTK3+ test battery was used to determine motor competence elements. The d2 attention test was used to determine attention levels. The statistical analysis of the data obtained in the study was transferred to the SPSS 18.0 programme and the analyses were performed using this statistical programme. As a result of the homogeneity test, it was determined that the data showed a normal distribution. At this point, it was decided to use independent samples t-test for comparisons between groups. Effect sizes of the differences were calculated and interpreted according to Cohen's d values. No significant difference was found between the groups among the motor competence elements (p>0.05). In the comparison of the elements of attention level between the two groups, it was determined that there were significant differences in favour of volleyball athletes in TN, E2, CP and TN-E parameters (p<0,05; 0,01). As a result, from the two groups with similar motoric elements, girls obtained better results in terms of attention performance than boys, that is, volleyball players obtained better results than basketball players.