Investigation of physical activity and social network levels of winter athletes in the COVID-19 pandemic

Introduction and Aim This research was made to determine the physical activity and social network levels of winter sports athletes during the COVID -19 period. Materials and Methods For this purpose, by obtaining the necessary permissions, a total of 472 winter sports athletes, 286 men, and 186 women, were reached through digital surveys distributed throughout Turkey. Physical activity levels of athletes were determined by the Turkish version of the International Physical Activity Survey Short Form, and the Social Network Addiction Scale was used to specify their social network level. The data obtained were evaluated at the .05 level, and the SPSS 25 program was used to carry out all operations in the analysis process. In the research, to determine the demographic characteristics of participants and their distribution into groups, descriptive analyses were made. Afterward, for the determination of distribution properties and checking the availability of parametric tests, 2 group comparisons were made by independent t-tests, 2 or more group comparisons with homogeneous variations were made by One Way ANOVA; groups with many differences amongst them and determining such differences used the "LSD" test, variations lacking homogenization used Welch and determining which groups had the most differentiations amongst them used Post Hoc Multi comparison with "Tamhane's" test. Pearson correlation analysis was applied to determine the relationship between variables. Result As a result of the analysis, physical activity level and attention sub-dimension, mood change sub-dimension, relapse sub-dimension, and generally social network addiction were shown to have statistically significant, low, and negative associations (p<.05). Conclusion Last of all, it was determined that as the level of physical activity increased, attention, mood changes, relapse, and generally social network addiction decreased. Keywords: COVID-19, Pandemic, Physical activity, Social network, Winter sport