Examination of the relationship between self-talk andsports motivation of athletes in different branches

The aim of this study is to determine the self-talk and sport motivation levels of athletes in different branches, to reveal the relationship between them and to reveal whether they differ significantly in terms of some variables. In the quantitative approach perspective, the research was conducted using relational screening model and questionnaire technique. The population of the research consists of participants doing sports in different branches in Gümüşhane province. The research group was determined by convenience sampling method and a total of 421 athletes, 36.8% female (155) and 63.2% male (266), were included in the study. "Personal Information Form", "Self-Talk Scale" and "Motivation Scale in Sports" created by the researcher were used as data collection tools in the study. In the analysis of the data, descriptive and descriptive statistics, T-test for independent groups, one-way analysis of variance, Pearson correlation and regression analysis were applied. Kurtosis and skewness values were taken as indicators of normal distribution of the data, and p=0.05 was taken as the significance level. When the results of the study were analyzed, the participants' self- talk and sport motivation scores were above the average. When the sports motivation scale scores were examined in terms of independent variables, significant differences were found in terms of age, weekly training days, daily training hours, mileage status, education status, years of doing sports and totem belief variables; while significant differences were found in the self-talk scale scores in terms of gender, age, weekly training days, sports branch and years of doing sports variables. Another important result is that there is a positive and moderately significant relationship between self-talk and sports motivation of the participants and that self-talk is 16.8% effective on sports motivation.