Investigation of the relationship between difficulty in participating in sports, emotion regulation and psychological resilience in disabled persons

This research aims to investigate, interpret and present more comprehensive data on the relationship between difficulties in participating in sports, emotion regulation and psychological resilience among disabled individuals and the level of their interaction. In addition, this study aims to present the findings by examining the difficulties in participating in sports, emotion regulation and psychological resilience levels among disabled individuals with the variables of gender, age, marital status, type of disability and sports experience. For this purpose, a total of 208 disabled individuals, 122 of whom were female and 86 were male, participated in the research voluntarily. The relational screening method was used in the research. The "Personal Information Form", "Difficulties in Participating in Sports Scale for Disabled Individuals", "Emotion Regulation Scale" and "Brief Psychological Resilience Scale" were used as data collection tools in the research. Microsoft Excel and SPSS 22.0 package program were used for the analysis of the obtained data. After this stage, T-Test was used in paired group comparisons, and Pearson correlation analysis was used to examine the relationship between two variables. In addition, Simple Regression analysis was performed to determine the predictive power of the difficulties in participating in sports in disabled individuals on emotion regulation and psychological resilience. As a result of the analysis, no significant difference was found between the gender variable of the participants and the environmental strain sub-dimension of the difficulties in participating in sports in disabled individuals scale, while a significant difference was found in favor of male participants in the emotional avoidance and awareness sub-dimensions. No significant difference was found between the gender variable of the participants and the suppression sub-dimension of the emotion regulation scale, while a significant difference was found in favor of male participants in the cognitive reappraisal sub-dimension. It was determined that there was no significant difference between psychological resilience and the variables of gender, age, and type of sport. A low-level negative relationship was found between the emotional avoidance sub-dimension of the difficulties in participating in sports in disabled individuals and the cognitive reappraisal sub-dimension of the emotion regulation scale. Keywords: Emotion Regulation; Disabled; Psychological Resilience; Sport