Investigation of the effect of physical activity program adapted on some motor skills and quality of life in young individuals with smile intellectual disability

In this study, the effect of a 12-week adapted physical activity program applied to individuals aged 14-18 with mild intellectual disabilities on some motor skills and quality of life was examined. The research was conducted with the experimental screening method, with a total of 66 (31) participants, 36 (17 women, 19 men) from Elazığ Abdullah-Hakan Tangülü Special Education Vocational School as the experimental group, and 30 (14 women, 16 men) from Elazığ Mavi Kardelen Rehabilitation Center as the control group (31 women, 35 men) individuals participated. In the research planned as a 12-week period, participants' height, body weight, balance, strength, reaction time and flexibility characteristics were determined by pre-test, post-test and permanence test. In addition, evaluations of the quality of life at the beginning and end of the process were made by the participants' parents. SPSS 22.0 package program was used in the statistical analysis of the data obtained from the measurements, and ANOVA test with T test was used to determine the differences within the group, between the groups and in repeated measurements, taking into account the skewness and kurtosis values of the data and the normality values in the distributions before the statistical operations. As a result of the measurements, after the adapted physical activity program, a significant difference was detected between the experimental and control groups in height, body weight, body mass index, balance, strength and flexibility values (p<0.05), while there was a similarity in reaction times and standing long jump scores was observed (p>0.05). While significant changes were generally recorded in the experimental group, it was determined that the values in the control group were mostly similar. The fact that there is a significant difference in favor of the experimental group only in the "school functionality" sub-dimension of the quality of life scale, which consists of four sub-dimensions, can be said that the adapted physical activity program makes a positive contribution to the effectiveness of the school or school environment.