The effect of sports on social interaction of high school students

The aim of this study is to examine the effects of sports by high school students on their social interaction and investigates how this interaction leads to a change in their social skills and whether sports plays a role on individuals? ability to deal with social phenomenon.We examined data from a sample of 821 high school students from 16 high schools (9 General high schools, 3 Anatolian high schools, 2 engineering-based vocational high schools and 2 commerce-based vocational high schools) in the city of Denizli in Turkey registered during the school year of 2008-2009. Students from 9th, 10th and 11th grade were selected randomly.The Survey used in the study has three parts. The first part includes 18 questions related to the personal characteristics of the students; the second part includes 34 questions related to the level of social interaction, and the third part includes 35 questions related to the level of social interaction as a result of engagement in sports.We used a closed-ended question type as well as 5 option Likert scale for the questionnaire. A Likert scale is the simplest and the most widely used scale in survey research. The format of a typical five-level Likert item used in this study follows:1. Strongly disagree, 2.Disagree, 3. Undecided, 4. Agree, 5. Strongly AgreeThe questionnaire consists of 69 questions. Several widely-used sociological scales such as Hacettepe personality inventory, sociotropy autonomy scale, social comparison scale, social learning survey, self-report inventory, self-knowledge forms were utilized to prepare the questionnaire.The survey was administered in 45 day increments to 35 high school students using a test-retest method with a correlation coefficient of r=.80. The reliability coefficients for this study produced an excellent Cronbach?s Alpha of 0.846 for the overall questions and =0.739 for the level of social interaction, = 0.802 for the level of social interaction as a result of engagement in sports.The Mann-Whitney U test is used for paired comparisons. On performance of multiple comparisons, Kruskal-Wallis Test was used in conjunction with Correlation tests. P value of 0.05 is determined for the analysis. However, when the differences are large as a result of the Kruskal-Wallis Test, the ranking method was applied to the overall dataset.There was a difference in the level of social interaction by high school type. Students who attend the science high schools (advanced placement high schools) had the highest level of social interaction. The lowest level of social interaction was among students who attend vocational high schools. There was a significant gender difference in the level of social interaction. The type of track (science, humanities, technical) high school students choose also had a significant affect on the level of social interaction. Students on the science track had the highest level of social interaction. Students on the technical track had the lowest level of social interaction. Time spent in residence had a significant affect on the social interaction. City residents had a higher level of interaction than town residents. There was not a significant difference in the level of social interaction among freshmen than seniors. Since there was no significant mean rank difference, we did not further investigate.