Investigation of the effect of sensation seeking and change seeking on life satisfaction in invidual recreational scuba divers

This study aims to examine the effects of excitement and change way of searching on the life satisfaction of individuals who engage in recreational scuba diving. Recreational Scuba Diving is known as a type of activity that is exciting and involves the search for change. When the literature was examined, although there were studies examining the concepts of excitement searcging, change seeking and life satisfaction in the field of sports and recreation, separately or together, it was seen that the resources used together in recreational scuba diving were quite limited. For this reason, the study is aimed to be among the original studies in its field and it is thought that it can be a source for other studies to be carried out. The scope of the research consists of individuals who are interested in scuba diving under the umbrella of the Turkish Underwater Sports Federation (TSSF) and have diving certificates approved by TSSF at different levels or have received diving training. The sample consists of a total of 307 scuba divers, 107 women and 200 men, selected from different age groups. Participants were selected by simple random sampling from TSSF approved organisations, private sports clubs and online forums and groups related to scuba diving. In the method section of this research, an integrated survey form was created by combining three separate measurement tools. A personal information field containing the demographic information of the participants was added to the entrance section of the survey form and was arranged so that the participants could easily submit their information. Measurement tools include the Sensation Seeking Form V (SSS-V) developed by Zuckerman (1994) and the Change Seeking Index (CSI) developed by Steenkamp and Baumgartner (1995)]. and the Life Satisfaction Scale (LSS) developed by Diener et al. (1985) were used. The obtained measurement data were transferred to be used in computer-based statistical software for statistical analysis. Statistical methods such as descriptive statistics and frequency analysis were applied to analyze these data. In order to determine the difference between the participants' demographic characteristics between excitement seeking, change seeking and life satisfaction levels, the homogeneity of the variances was confirmed by first examining the "Levene" values, and then ''t-test'' and "one-way analysis of variance" (ANOVA) were applied. ''Pearson correlation tes'' was applied to determine and interpret the level of relationship between average scores. Additionally, "linear regression analysis" was conducted to test the effect between the scales. In the statistical analysis and interpretation of the data, the significance level of p <.05 was taken as basis. The scope with the findings, depending on the participants' excitement and change-seeking levels and life satisfaction. Crucial differences were found in age, marital status, educational status and income level variables. In addition to this, it was determined that there were statistically significant relationships between the participants' excitement seeking and change seeking levels (r: 0.14; p< .05) and between change seeking and life satisfaction levels (r: 0.14; p< .05). However, no statistically significant relationship was found between excitement seeking and life satisfaction (r: 0.09; p< .05). Linear regression analysis showed that excitement seeking (β=0.07, t=1.38, p=0.16) had no effect on life satisfaction, and change seeking (β=0.12, t=2.26, p=0.02) had little effect on life satisfaction also it was concluded that it had a positive effect.