Examination of secondary school students' motivations to play digital games and participate in physical activity

This his study aims to determine the digital game playing motivations and physical activity participation motivations of high school students. A total of 280 female and 247 male high school students participated in the study during the 2024–2025 academic year. The research was conducted using a survey method. Data were collected through Google Forms using three different data collection tools. First, a "Personal Information Form" consisting of 9 questions developed by the researcher was used to identify students' demographic characteristics (gender, age, grade level, type of school, mother's education level, father's education level, family income level, status of doing sports, and type of sport). Second, the "Digital Game Playing Motivation Scale" developed by Demir and Hazar [33] was used to determine students' digital game playing motivations. Third, to measure students' motivations for participating in physical activity, the "Physical Activity Participation Motivation Scale (PAPMS)" developed by Tekkurşun and Cicioğlu [95] was used. Since the skewness and kurtosis values of the data indicated a normal distribution, parametric tests (t-test and ANOVA) were applied. As a result of the analyses, statistically significant differences were found based on gender and active participation in sports. Additionally, some sub-dimensions showed statistically significant differences based on age, grade level, type of school, and parental education levels. However, no significant difference was found based on family income level.