Examination of leadership features and empathy levels of Sports Sciences Faculty students

The aim of this research is to examine the leadership characteristics and empathy levels of the students of the faculty of sports sciences in terms of some demographic information and to reveal the relationship between these two characteristics. In the study, a descriptive relational survey model was used. The sample of the research consists of 240 individuals selected by random sampling method among the students of the faculty of sports sciences. As a data collection tool, a 6-question personal information form was used to reveal the socio-demographic information status of the participants. In the research, "Empathic Tendency Scale" developed by Dökmen (1988) and "Multidimensional Leadership Orientations Scale" developed by Dursun, Günay and Yenel (2019) were used. In the study, whether the total scores of the scale differed according to gender, sports branch or not was determined by Student's t-test, and whether it differed according to age, department, income status, class, branch type was determined by One-Way Analysis of Variance and Tukey's multiple comparison test. In addition, the relations between the leadership characteristics of the participants and their empathic levels were determined by the Pearson correlation coefficient. In the study, it was determined that female students had higher empathic tendency total scores than male students. According to the age distribution of the participants in the study, no significant difference was found between the Multidimensional Leadership Orientation levels and the Empathic Tendency levels. In the study, it was determined that the students studying in sports management had higher multidimensional leadership orientation level than the students of the recreation department.In the study, it was determined that the students studying in sports management had higher multidimensional leadership orientation level than the students of the recreation department. In the study, it was determined that students who declared that they were middle-income had lower levels of multi-directional leadership orientation than students who declared that they were low-income and high-income. A similar situation can be said for the political and charismatic leadership sub-dimension. It was determined that there was a weak positive and significant relationship between the empathic disposition levels of the Faculty of Sport Sciences students participating in the research and their multi-faceted leadership orientations. Similarly, it was determined that there was a weak positive and significant relationship with the empathy tendencies of the individuals and the sub-dimension scores of political leadership, human-based leadership, charismatic leadership and structural leadership. Keywords:Leadership Traits, Leader, Leadership, Empathy, Empathy Level