Examining family belonging, digital gaming addiction and leisure time management skills of individuals participating in e-sports games

This research aims to examine the family belonging, digital gaming addiction, and leisure time management skills of individuals participating in e-sports games. The survey model, a type of quantitative research, was used in the study. The study group consists of 479 participants who voluntarily participated in our research from individuals who play e-sports within the scope of digital gaming, including 247 females and 232 males. In the research, "Demographic Information Form," "Family Belonging Scale" developed by Mavili, Kesen, and Daşbaş (2014), "Digital Game Addiction Scale" developed by Yalçın (2015), and "Leisure Time Management Scale" developed by Akgül (2015) were used. SPSS-27 (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) was used to perform statistical analyses in the research. First, frequency and percentage distributions were calculated to describe the demographic characteristics of the participants. Then, kurtosis and skewness coefficients were calculated to determine whether the data showed normal distribution. The skewness and kurtosis coefficients of the distribution being between -1.5 and +1.5 indicated that the data had an acceptable level of normal distribution (Tabachnick and Fidell, 2013). Following these results, parametric tests were applied. Independent samples t-test was preferred for two-variable measurements, and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) test was employed for measurements with more than two variables. According to the results of one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), the Levene's test was conducted to determine the post-hoc test to be used in cases where the means differed significantly between groups, and the homogeneity of variances of group distributions was investigated."Since the variances were found to be non-homogeneous, the Games-Howell test was performed. Pearson Correlation Analysis was conducted to test the relationship between scores obtained from the Family Belonging Scale, Digital Game Addiction Scale, and Leisure Time Management Scale. The significance level was based on 95% (p<0.05) in the statistical analysis of the findings. While no significant difference was found in family belonging and leisure time management according to the gender variable, a significant difference was detected in digital game addiction in favor of males. Significant differences were found between family belonging, digital game addiction, and leisure time management according to the age variable. No statistically significant difference was found in family belonging and leisure time management according to the participants' number of siblings variable. Still, a significant difference was observed in digital game addiction according to the number of siblings, and it was found that game addiction decreased as the number of siblings increased. No significant relationship was found between family belonging, digital game addiction, and leisure time management according to the parent status (married, divorced, deceased) variable. When examining the correlation results between family belonging, digital game addiction, and leisure time management in the research, it was observed that as individuals' level of family belonging increased, they managed their leisure time more efficiently and their digital game addiction levels decreased. On the other hand, individuals with high leisure time management skills were found to have low levels of digital game addiction. These results indicate that the sense of belonging to family can be effective in efficiently evaluating leisure time management and preventing digital game addiction. Keywords: Digital Game Addiction, E-sports, Family Belonging, Leisure Time Management.