Preventative therapeutic recreation applications: a study towards hearing impaired person(s)

This aim of this study is the examination of the changes in the levels of attitude, life satisfaction and leisure time of volunteer university students against the handicapped people through the Therapeutic recreation program generated within the scope of Leisure Time Skill Model. It is a descriptive study in which quantitative techniques were used for this purpose. Student sample group in Celal Bayar University consists of a total of 85 students including 45 students from experimental group (Xyas=21,00 +/- 2,31) and 40 students from control group (Xyas=21,27 +/- 1,48) elected with the method of random sampling. 43 participants attending our study is female (Xyas=20,43 +/- 2,08) and 42 of them are male (Xyas=21,77 +/- 1,94). They are separated into two different groups (experimental and control) and experimental group was ensured to have the education of sign language for 8 weeks and attend leisure time activities with hearing impaired people. In order to attain the goals of the study, 3 different scales were utilized. In order to understand the behavior of the participants regarding the spare time, a scale called "The Meaning of Spare Time" which was developed by Handerson (1996) and was adapted to Turkish by Gürbüz et all. (2007); was used, in order to understand their satisfaction in life, a scale called "Life Satisfaction Scale" developed by Diener et all (1985) and adopted to Turkish by Köker (1991) was used and finally, a scale called "attitude towards disabled" developed by Dökmen (2000) was used. Descriptive statistics, median percentage and frequency values were used for the analysis of the data. In order to determine whether all subjects that make up the sub-dimensions demonstrate normal distribution range or not, Kolmogrof-Smirnof and Shapiro-Wilks tests were employed and it was found out that the aforementioned subjects do not demonstrate normal range of distribution. Therefore, for the pre-test and proof positive comparisons, Wilcoxon signed mark test was used as for the paired comparisons, Mann Whitney-U test was utilized. As the result of the analysis of the Wilcoxon signed mark test and Mann Whitney-U test, it was revealed that while there is no significant difference between the pre-test and proof positive of Control Group's attitude scale points towards the hearing impaired, the proof positive points of the experiment group were found out to be significantly low. (p<0,05). In addition, the pre-tests of the sub dimensions of the experiment group's meaning of spare time scale (inner motivation (z=-,420); Utilization of spare time (z=-3,368)) were revealed to be significantly high compared to the proof positive of the same scale. (p<0,05). In terms of the quality of life, no significant differences were apparent between the pre-tests and the proof positive of the control and experiment groups. . (p>0,05) It is safe to say that the Preventative Therapeutic Recreation applications towards the society have a positive impact on the attitudes and spare time related skills regarding the disabled.