Investigation of perceived sense of community and life satisfaction in adolescents participating in recreational sports programs

It is aimed to compare and examine the relationship between the perceived sense of community and the life satisfaction of adolescents participating in recreational sports programs in terms of various variables in this study. The study's sample group consists of 217 females and 185 males, 402 adolescents between the ages of 14-18 participating in recreational sports programs. The "Sense of Community in Sport Scale" and "Life Satisfaction Scale" were used as data collection tools in the study. We evaluated the distribution by skewness and kurtosis, performed the confirmatory factor analysis for the measurement validity, and used Cronbach Alpha's coefficient to determine measurement reliability. We benefitted from a t-test to compare the means of two groups while performing ANOVA to compare differences of means among more than two groups. Additionally, we used linear regression analysis to interpret the relationship between variables. The study showed that the means of a perceived sense of community differentiated according to gender, a branch of sports, participating weekly in the sports programs, and the membership duration of the program. Additionally, it was found that there was no differentiation in the means of life satisfaction according to participants' demographic features, while the means of the obtained points were above average. Furthermore, according to the regression analysis results, we found that the perceived sense of community positively and significantly affected life satisfaction. Consequently, the findings of this study contribute not only to the literature but also to the practitioners' development of recreational sports programs for adolescents.