Investigation of the effects of 8-week recreative activities on self esteem in primary school children

In this study, the effect of recreational exercises on self-esteem in elementary school students was investigated. A total of 40 female students aged between 10 and 12 years living in the city center of Batman participated in the study. 20 of the female students participated in the study and 20 of them were control group. the mean age of the experimental group was 11,13 ± 0,44 and the mean age of the control group; 11,79 ± 0,21. Female students forming experimental group were subjected to recreation exercise for 8 weeks while female students in the control group were not subjected to any exercise. In our study; The Rosenberg self-esteem scale used 10 sub-categories. SPSS 22 IBM statistical package program was used to analyze the data. Data are summarized as mean and standard deviation. The data were analyzed by Shapiro-Wilk test for normal distribution and it was found that the data showed normal distribution. The difference between the independent groups was analyzed by Independent Sample T-Test. Paired Samples T Test was used in the pretest and posttest comparison. At the end of the study, it was found that the values of the experimental group were significantly higher than the control group in the posttest values of all the questions in comparison of the posttest results of the control and experimental group (p <0.05). As a result, it was concluded that the exercises performed for recreational purposes would have a significant positive effect on the self-esteem scores of individuals.