Investigation of exercise addiction in master athletes caring for individual and team sports

This study was conducted to investigate the exercise addiction levels of master (men and women over 35) who participate in team and individual sports competitions. In the study, while athletics and orienteering branches form individual sports, participants interested in football and basketball branches in team sports. This study was attended by master athletes (age 35 and older) who volunteered for at least 2 years and 2 days a week regularly. The sample size is composed of male and female athletes over the age of 35 who are located in Istanbul, Izmir, Ankara and Muğla. "Personal Information Form", "Exercise Addiction Scale-21" questionnaires were sent to the athletes in the provinces and the questionnaire was sent online via the internet (Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram) and the athletes were asked to apply the questionnaire online. According to the data obtained, 201 athletes from groups located in Istanbul, Izmir, Ankara and Muğla have participated. Since the online survey was applied due to the pandemic (covid-19) after making the arrangements for the application of measurement tools and collecting the data, the wrong or incomplete data were excluded from the research and analyzed. SPSS 19 package program was used for statistical analysis of the data. The level of significance in the study was determined as p <0.05, and the differences between groups; Independent Sample t-Test was used for variables suitable for normal distribution and One-Way Anova test was used for comparison between groups.59 women and 142 men participated in the study. Of the participants, 68 athletics, 41 orienteering, 63 football and 29 people participated in basketball branches. 33,83% of individuals were athletics 20,40% of orienteering 31,34% of football, 14,13% of them participated in basketball branches. In the results of working; It has been found that 73.6% of master athletes are asymptomatic, 25.05% are symptomatic and 1.4% are addicted to exercise. Also, no significant difference was found between individual sports and team sports. (P> 0.05).However, when we look at the exercise commitment between branches, a statistically significant difference was found between basketball and football branches (p <0.05). Keywords: Addiction, Exercise, Exercise addiction, Master athlete, Sport