Investigation of digital game addiction level of students in sports sciences faculty: A mixed method research

Aim: This research was carried out with the aim of examining the digital game addiction levels of the students of the faculty of sports sciences and revealing the reasonsfor the addiction of the students who are addicted. Material and Method: The study consisted of two stages: quantitative research and qualitative research. In the first stage of the study, the scanning method was used. There search group consisted of undergraduate students studying at İnönü University Faculty ofSports Sciences in the 2021-2022 academic year. "Digital Game Addiction Scale for University Students" was applied as data collection tool and T-test and Anova were used indata analysis. In the second stage of the study, "Semi-Structured Interview Form"developed by the researcher was applied as a data collection tool, and "content analysis","thematic coding"and "descriptive analysis" were used in data analysis. Results: In the quantitative study, a significant difference (p<0.05) was found between the digital game addictions of the students of the faculty of sports sciences according to their gender, internet surfing time, status of playing digital games and the type of game they played. However, there was no significant difference (p>0.05) between digital game addictions according to the age, department and class of the students. Conclusion: It was determined that %5.88 of the sports science students were in thedependent group and %0.91 were in the highly dependent group. It has been observed that students who are far from active life and spend more time in the digital environment are more prone to addiction, and games with a high level of competitive environment increase addiction. Aggressiveness, abusive speech, communication and sleep disorders have been observed in addicted individuals.