The relationship between leisure satisfaction and psychological resilience among students of the faculty of sports sciences

The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between leisure satisfaction and psychological resilience among students at the Faculty of Sports Sciences. The population of the study consists of students enrolled at the Faculty of Sports Sciences at Bartın University during the 2022-2023 academic year. The most suitable sampling method for the study was employed in selecting the sample group, considering the difficulty of reaching the entire population, and a selection strategy was adopted. The sample group includes 143 male and 105 female students actively studying in the Physical Education and Sports Teaching, Coaching Education, Sports Management, and Recreation departments at Bartın University's Faculty of Sports Sciences in the 2022-2023 academic year. For data collection, the "Personal Information Form" was used to gather students' demographic data, the "Leisure Satisfaction Scale," adapted to Turkish by Gökçe and Orhan (2011), was employed to measure leisure satisfaction levels, and the "Brief Resilience Scale," adapted to Turkish culture by Doğan (2015), was used to determine the students' psychological resilience levels. The data obtained from the scales were transferred to IBM SPSS 26, and descriptive statistics were used to summarize demographic data. Subsequently, t-tests, one-way ANOVA, and Pearson correlation analyses were conducted. The analysis results revealed no statistically significant difference in participants' average leisure satisfaction scores based on the gender variable (p>0.05). Similarly, no significant difference was found between participants' average psychological resilience scores and gender (p>0.05). However, there was a statistically significant difference in average leisure satisfaction scores across the departments in which the participants studied (p<0.05). A similar statistically significant difference was observed between the participants' average psychological resilience scores and the departments (p<0.05). In comparing participants' average leisure satisfaction scores based on how they evaluate their leisure time, no statistically significant differences were found in the psychological, physical, relaxation, and aesthetic subdimensions (p>0.05), while significant differences were found in the educational and social subdimensions (p<0.05). No significant difference was observed in participants' average psychological resilience scores based on how they evaluated their leisure time (p>0.05). When comparing the participants' average leisure satisfaction scores based on the number of days they participate in leisure activities per week, statistically significant differences were found in the psychological, educational, social, physical, and relaxation subdimensions (p<0.05), whereas no significant difference was observed in the aesthetic subdimension (p>0.05). No statistically significant difference was observed in participants' average psychological resilience scores based on the number of days per week they participate in leisure activities (p>0.05). Examining the relationship between participants' average psychological resilience and leisure satisfaction scores, a moderate positive relationship was found between psychological resilience and the psychological subdimension of leisure satisfaction (r=0.433), the educational subdimension (r=0.306), the social subdimension (r=0.337), and the relaxation subdimension (r=0.316), while a low positive relationship was found with the physical subdimension (r=0.280), and a moderate positive relationship was observed with the aesthetic subdimension (r=0.370) (p<0.05). The predictive power of leisure satisfaction scores on psychological resilience was found to be 21%. The results were discussed in relation to the relevant literature, and recommendations were provided for future research.